Hi to all who may be interested. I am still very new to owning a lathe but soon got frustrated with using a 17 spanner to tighten and loosen the tail stock on my Sieg C2 lathe and not being able to get the kit for the tail stock modification was forced to come up with a solution myself. Our South African Rand is very weak at the moment and costs to get anything shipped here are exorbitant. My simple solution was to buy a 10 mm thread nut coupling that replaces the normal nut which I drilled and tapped at the top to take a 6 mm threaded rod or bolt as the lever after marking where the best position would be to lock and unlock the tail stock. I then turned a small knob out of acetal and threaded it onto the end. Later I added a piece of aluminium tube to fit over the 6 mm threaded rod. The result I am pleased to say works a treat with about a quarter turn required to lock or unlock the tail stock, this all with your thumb and it does not get in the way of the cross slide. See the photos to see how simple it really is to make and operate. Saved myself the cost of the kit by doing it this way.
