Milling The Rack Channel Off the Taig Lathe Bed

I wanted to see how hard it was to remove the rack channel from the bed for those who don't want to flip the bed around when retrofitting the new lathe power feed.

The channel.

I wanted to see if it could be sawn off easily using a hacksaw blade (without a frame, as the rack channel is too long). Short answer is that it would take you a very long time.

The bed set up on the mill.

I was able to mill almost the whole channel off in one pass.

Then I had to re-clamp to get the last little bit.

All gone.

Enough clearance for the lead screw coupling.

And the screw.

So if you have a mill it's doable. Without a mill you are probably better off just flipping the bed 180 and living with the foot at the other end.