Having read the posts to date makes me uneasy. I have an Atlas 10F
lathe and have been using the tailstock this way for many years. The
auto ejection feature on my lathe always works. Occasionally the hand
wheel slips when attempting ejection, so I have to tighten it up. A
nuisance, but not enough of a problem to have ever taken the thing apart
to see if a key is missing or something.
I wonder if the root problem is that the taper in the ram is a
little bunged up making it necessary to hammer the tooling into place?
Might be worth it to blue up a known good taper and check for fit.
HSM used to have an ad for some green plastic morse taper cleaners.
They look like a straight flute reamer, but are made of some kind of
plastic that must have a fine abrasive in it. I have one for Morse #2
and one for Morse #3. Once every couple of years I run then into the
headstock and tailstock just to tidy up the bores.
If I had to vote, I'd choose the pickle fork over the heat any time.

HSM had an article a few years ago written by a guy who had trouble with
the tooling coming loose in the tailstock. So he drilled and tapped a
hole all the way through the ram in the area where the tang would be.
Then he lock-tited 2 set screws into those holes so they would stop the
tang from turning if the the tool did come loose. Not a bad idea.

Pete Stanaitis
------------------------

lens wrote:
My MT2 drill chuck got stuck in my lathe tailstock. I did not want to
crank *too too* hard trying to push the arbor out for fear of damaging
feed threads. I finally got it out by taking apart the tailstock and
heating the ram (if that's the right term) with a little propane torch.
Tapping a rod thru the ram then popped the chuck out. Tapping the rod
did not work until I added the heat.

My question is how do I prevent the chuck (or other arbors) from
sticking (that much) in the first place?