I stripped the whole lot to a bare casting, cleaned it all out then rebuilt it with new bushes, bearings and seals throughout. While the big bits were away being reground I tackled the overhaul of the apron. Anyway I gladly took her up on the offer of the new quill and it arrived a day later. She then went on to tell that because they were so rare, and because they were clearing out the stores, I could have a brand new quill to suit my machine for £200, quite a reduction on the standard price of these things! The main reason I was looking at the quill in the first place is because it was quite a loose fit in the bore, and the taper was quite scabby too. It would appear that for the most part these lathes were built with a tailstock using a quill of 63mm and MT4 taper, however for a very short period in 1989, they supplied the M350 with a tailstock using a 73mm quill and MT5 taper. A couple of days passed by, and a lady in the parts department at 600 Group called me, and told me that they had gotten to the bottom of my tailstock mystery. Anyway, I sat myself down and asked if it would be possible to buy a new complete tailstock, and what would the price be for such a thing? Thankfully this was another obsolete part so no price was mentioned except that it would have been ridiculously expensive. That would have just been typical really, going by the previous accident damage that had been discovered. I decided to call the people at 600 Group to pick their brains and at first they were baffled, and the first thought was it had been mucked around with and someone had fitted a tailstock from a different machine. The spec for the M350 tailstock is MT4 and a quill diameter of 63mm, but upon checking what I had, the taper was MT5 and a quill diameter of 73mm. A little mystery presented itself when I was checking over the tailstock.