Hope this won't be too long an answer, but no guarantees. I spent a LOT of time, energy, and frustration chasing down a runout problem on a lathe I bought used (Nova DVR XP). From my experience, I'd recommend the following: 1. Buy a morse taper cleaner (plastic ribbed thingy) and use it. Use your finger, after, to feel - WITH THE LATHE OFF! - for ridges or variations. Measure runout on dead center. 2. If still have a lot of runout, buy a post for your banjo designed to hold a dial indicator and the indicator. Rick Herrell (rherrell, here) makes a beauty, and it's reasonably priced. Measure runout on the INSIDE of your spindle. If it's over .001 or .0015, complain to the manufacturer. If that gets you nowhere, it's time to try to fix it yourself. 3. Buy (yeah, sorry for spending your money) a double-headed Morse taper made by Technatool (Nova). I forget what they call it - something with "align" in the name, I think. It's very useful for aligning the headstock and tailstock, so it's a tool you will want to keep, anyway. Now, here's the possibly controversial part, but the way I finally solved my problem. Get several grits of self-adhesive sandpaper. Put the coarsest grit (think I started with 150) on the spindle side of the double Morse taper alignment tool. Use a razor blade to cut the paper so there is no overlap. Chuck the other end into your tailstock, and turn on your lathe to its slowest speed. Gently advance the sandpaper end into your spindle, then back out. Clean off the sandpaper with a rubber sandpaper cleaning stick and blow/brush off any debris. Turn on the lathe and advance again into the spindle. Repeat several times, then switch to the next finer grit. Work through the grits up to about 400 or 600. Clean out the spindle in between each grit, and feel with your finger for ridges or bumps. When you're finished, clean out the taper in the spindle carefully. Use your taper cleaner, again. 4. Lastly, follow the great advice given me by John Goodin (Johnny CNC). Put a Sharpie mark on the outside face of your spindle, and another on your dead center so that, when you insert the dead center, the two marks will line up. Take a reading of runout as you slowly rotate by hand with the dial indicator near the tip of your dead center, and record it. Mentally, divide the outer circumference of your spindle into eighths. Take out the dead center, rotate it 1/8 turn, and reinsert. Measure and record again. When you're all done, you will undoubtedly find one spot that gives you less runout than the others. Reinforce the mark on your spindle, and put a NEW mark on the dead center so that, every time you insert it in the future, you know you will be aligned with the spot that gives you the very least runout. Turns out, I had a problem with my lathe because the previous owner apparently had turned some large bowls without having his steb center well seated. It chewed up the inside of the spindle. Using this method, I reduced runout at the end of my dead center from .012 (!) to just under .0015. Good luck. Russ
