Morse Taper Shank Sizes

All common woodworker's lathes and drill presses use a tapered spindle for mounting your tooling. They are designed for a male ended, slightly tapered shank that fits into the machine's hollow housing. The action of the tooling forces the collet farther into the housing, increasing the surface pressure between the two metal plates and the resulting friction prevents slippage. The design provides accurate centering and quick installaton of drill chuck arbors and lathe centers.

In order to simplify the fitting of these two pieces a number of standards were developed and adopted in the industry, the most well know being the "Morse Taper" (MT) developed in the late 1800's.

There are 8 sizes ranging from MT-0 to MT-7, each with a given size as outlined in the table below:

To make a quick check to figure out what Morse taper shank size you have, just measure the large diameter at "A" and that will more then likely give you enough information to be able to order the correct shank.

Typical tooling for wood lathes and drill presses in the woodworking arena are either a MT1 or MT2 so you shouldn't really have too much trouble identifying which one you have.

There are adapter sleeves that will convert the smaller MT male taper to hold the larger MT 2 shank, but it is not particularly advised. Usually if your lathe is designed to use a MT1 taper it is because it is only structurally designed for smallerl work. Upping the shank to a MT2 may be dangerous and overload the capacity of your lathe.