I have a great 60-70 year-old Walker Turner mechanical variable speed 36" x 12" inboard/outboard wood lathe that I love except for the fact that the old spindle has always had a bit of annoying run out, and though I rebuilt the head with new bearings a few years back, it didn't help the issue much.
Now that I'm not (quite) a poor as I used to be and going to be using the wood lathe more often, I've decided to collect a full set of Teknatool Supernova chuck bodies so I don't have to change the four jaws every time I have a different diameter work piece to work on. This has sparked an idea: I'm thinking of machining my own 1" spindle for the WT with the mating chuck threads single-point turned into the spindle itself, as opposed to using one of the Nova inserts that the company provides to adapt different brand lathes to their chuck bodies. I also have a South Bend 9C that should easily handle this spindle project once I'm past the learning curve working on practice mockups made from some scrap AL alloy stock I've got lying around.
My questions are:
1) What specific material do you think is best to turn the spindle from?
2) Has anyone here gone so far as to actually single-point Teknatool's proprietary chuck threading to eliminate the need for an adapter?
3) should I just scrap the custom thread idea and go with 1-1/4" by 8 TPI?
In a perfect world, I'd like to be able to spin on and off these chucks at will without any fuss. Thanks in advance for any help!