Yep, you’re right. If you use a live center in the tailstock the dead sacrificial center would spin the part, but you wouldn’t be able to take much of a cut (if any). You may be able to polish the part or use a toolpost grinder, but that would be limited to the amount of contact made between the dead center and the part. More contact = more friction. So you’re right, you would need a lathe dog to “turn between centers” as the post suggests. But that’s fine, let the leg of the lathe dog ride against the chuck jaw (instead of riding in a slot on your faceplate). Just be careful that the lathe dog doesn’t slap back and forth between the chuck jaws.

The reason a lathe dog isn’t shown in the pictures in the post is because I’m using the between centers setup in another useful way – for accurate setup. Sometimes you need to set the angle of the toolpost very accurately. Or you need to line up your tailstock to turn a long taper (or for that matter, you need to put the tailstock back to centerline after using it to turn a taper). One easy way to do this is to use a 12″ test bar that is held (without spinning) between centers. Then you can use a dial indicator attached to the cross slide (in my case via a mag-base) to sweep the test bar. If you move the dial indicator back and forth along the 12″ bar, you can get the tailstock set perfectly to zero.

In my case, I needed a way to duplicate the angle on a Morse taper, so I set the dial indicator up to sweep the taper. Once I had a zero reading across the entire length of the taper I knew the angle of the compound was set correctly. Harold Hall goes over using a “between-centers test bar” in his book, Lathework A Complete Course. He even goes into another useful technique, which is to set your cross slide at a very slight angle (like 1mm in 100mm) so that advancing the compound .02mm only advances the tool 0.0002mm toward the workpiece. This allows you to take very light cuts when you’re trying to ease up on a finished diameter where precision is a must.

To go back to the beginning, if you’re interested in turning a part between centers without using a lathe dog, Frank Ford made a really neat “Lathe Drive Center“. It gets away from the sacrificial center idea, but it’s a really nifty project all on its own. Here’s a picture of it.

Sorry for the long-winded response. I hope you’re enjoying your G0602 as much as I am!