My dials are adjustable. I just loosen a set screw and spin the dial to zero- same thing on the tailstock and main screw.
That makes sense then. The dials are not adjustable on my old South Bend, hence the sharpie mark.
Butch, that sounds like a sweet setup on that Monarch lathe. Does yours have capability to instantly reverse the chuck? I saw a neat video of a threading tool on a horizontal pivot, so it could be reversed back through the threads without moving the cross slide, the tool just lifted up to ride on top in reverse. The lathe in the video was set up to instantly reverse at the end of the threads, don't know what it was though.
