So I have this VERY old 15 inch floor standing drill press it was originally run off of a steam driven line shaft but has since been converted to a massive 1/2 hp motor I am currently having the female Morse taper in the spindle re-reamed as it has taken a little abuse over the years i also have the original MT-2 chuck that came with the machine and the taper on it is VERY beat up I am wondering are the tapers themselves hardened? If not is there a reason they are not? If they are not I will probably tig weld the abused parts and have it re-turned down as I currently have the ability to have this done for free so why not? I know overall it would be best to just buy a new chuck but why give into consumerism if you give in on something that you know you can do and just buy something because it isn’t that expensive then that will lead into a spiral of doing this with more expensive things become self sufficient 

if you want to see the press look at my other posts one of them has it I have a lot more planned for this press but I am at school so I don’t have much time so yeah 

 It would seem to me that the arbors would not be hardened. If they slip or what ever in the spindle they would damage the spindle. It is much cheaper to replace the arbor rather than the spindle. 

I have to work tonight so i will check one and see. 

 

So i went to work and could not get one to lay on the hardness tester right but my file scratched it so at least softer than a file. 

This leads me to wonder: hypothetically, could one ream out a spindle by clamping a reamer of the proper taper in the vise, turning on the drill at the lowest speed, and lowering the spindle down onto the reamer?

Theoretically, yes it would work. Not much different that chucking the spindle in a lathe and using the tail stock stationary with a reamer or drill in it. The problem would lie in getting the reamer true. If it is off by just a little, and i do mean a very little, it is going to cut oversized and the taper will not be correct. The tolerance on a morse taper is .0002" over 1 linear foot (yes i had to look that up) so holding that with a reamer held in a vice would be almost impossible. 

The spindle is also most likely hardened or case hardened. That would mean you would need a carbide reamer and if those snag for whatever reason they usually break. And if case hardened you will provably cut deeper than it is hardened. 

When you use a drill they are not only cutting into the work but also digging into it. Think about using an auger for a post hole and how they pull themselves into the earth. If you have the taper out of tolerance you run a much greater risk of the drill pulling the chuck out of the spindle. 

I would cut the hole on a lathe by hogging out the majority of material with a drill in the tail stock. Then cut the finish with a boring bar. 

A lot of words to say hypothetically yes possible, but ill advised. 

That's what I thought; thank you. I knew that the necessary precision would be the idea's Achilles heel.

(Fun fact: the story about Achilles being invulnerable except for his heel is not in Homer's Iliad. Indeed, one of the things that makes his story so compelling is his awareness of his own mortality.)

My wife one day said foreign (for her, third) language expressions were her Archimedes’ ankle. (Can’t blame her too much — how many Ancient Greeks are famous for being submerged in water?)

Icarus and Leander spring to mind.

Also, Hippasus was thrown into the sea by his fellow Pythagoreans for pointing out the existence of irrational numbers.