I've got a 1440 Chinese lathe from Precision Mathews. Its not the cats
meow, but its still better than any other lathe I have. Often when
taking facing cuts or parting cuts I like to lock the carriage. The
bolt for that is a recessed socket head screw. It works ok, but it
seems I am always looking around for the hex key when I want to release
it and move the tool away from the stock. Unless I am holding it in my
hand the whole time it always takes me a couple seconds longer than I
would like to locate where I set it down.

I've been thinking about about making a taller head replacement bolt,
drilling it for a small vise handle. I've got a bit of 4140QT shaft on
hand and a bit of 1/4" 1144 rod. Making it should be no big deal. Any
reason why I shouldn't. I'd keep it as low as possible, and make the
handle about half the difference in length between a short arm and a
long arm hex key that size.

Speaking of such I'd also like to lock the cross slide from time to
time. There isn't a lock on it, but it does have a tapered gibb that's
easily adjustable with a screw at each end. Usually I just keep the
gibb adjusted a little bit tighter than is perfectly comfortable to spin
the hand wheel, but on heavy roughing cuts it can still back off on
longer pieces of stock. I wind up standing there with my hand on the
hand wheel and my eye on the DRO the whole time. Is that just the best
way to do it?