My lathe and dovetail jig are tools that I don’t use every day. But I would never dream of giving either one of them up. So, for the sake of shop space, I found a way to make double-duty use of the lathe footprint. All it took was a base for my dovetail jig that slips into the lathe bed.
I started with a plywood base that is slightly longer than my dovetail jig. Then, to secure it to the lathe, I made a bed filler and a cleat. For my setup, a ½" piece of plywood worked nicely as the bed filler (the piece that fits between the rails of the lathe bed).
Your lathe bed opening might require a different thickness for the bed filler.
Last, as you can see in the photo above, the cleat ties it all to the bed of the tool rest. The first drawing shows the size of hardware I used to clamp it in place.
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