Originally Posted by
Jim Colombo
Problem: Knowing the depth of the inside of a bowl or vessel.
My solution: Mount your 4 jaw chuck on the spindle. Place the end of your tailstock flush with the end of the bed. Rotate the quill as far into the tailstock as it will go. Measure from the ends of the jaws of the chuck to the tip of the quill. That dimension will never change so you can use it to determine how much material is left at the base of your piece. I have a scale on my quill so I rotated the quill until I had an easily remembered dimension from the chuck to the zero reading on my quill.