Morse Taper Centers Rack by Paul Hannaby

As shown during the July 3rd meeting of World Wide Woodturners, here is Paul Hannaby’s Morse Taper stand.

The stand can be free standing or could be mounted flat on a wall if the protruding corner at the top left was cut off. My version was intended to hang on the end of a cabinet.

The horizontal parts of the rack can be any length you want depending how many Morse taper accessories you have or you could even drill holes to hold other accessories. The top horizontal is 81mm wide, the other three are 45mm wide. On my rack, I adjusted the spacing on each level for the size of accessories, for example, the Jacobs chucks are a larger diameter and needed wider spacing but the holes for the simple 1″ four prong drives etc. can be closer together. The centre lines along each horizontal for marking out the drilling holes are 30mm from the front edge for the top horizontal and 22mm from each front edge for the other three horizontals.

I used 7/8″ ply for the pieces (because that’s what I had to hand) but any suitable wood could be used.

For my rack, I made three of the uprights to give it more strength but a shorter rack might only need two uprights.

To mark out and cut the uprights, I just printed the drawing and marked each corner on a piece of ply
using an awl and drew the lines on the wood by joining up the awl marks. To save time, I stuck
three pieces of ply together, just putting glue on the areas that would be cut out so I only had to mark
out the top piece. I used a bandsaw to make the cuts and when the last cut was done, the three pieces separated.

The holes for the morse tapers are 12mm for MT1, 18mm for MT2 and 24mm for MT3.

Drawing attached for the uprights. I didn’t do a drawing for the horizontal pieces as they are just a
simple rectangle.