In article , "George" george@least
wrote:

You can discount the information based on prejudice if you want, but what
you have here is one of the reasons why I use dovetails, not compression
holds.

snip some good reasons for using dovetailed recesses...

THis is good reasoning and quite informative. However, in this case we
have the following:
- I was using dry maple. Trust me, it doesn't compress much
- I don't crank on the chuck. This will happen with the lightest of
pressure.
- different pieces in different orientation always result in missing the
exact same way, i.e the error is always in the same direction.

Considering that, I would suspect it cannot be a wood compression issue.

Did you put your spur center point matched up against your tailstock
point?

Yup. But, of course, *in theory*, they could both be 30 degrees to each
other and still meet at a point; in practice, only a small error could
happen and the ends still meet. Bah. Must revisit the headstock.