Why on Earth are tailstocks slanted towards the head?

[Tokarev]

Virtually every lathe I come across has tailstock slanted towards the head, with a tiny minority not having a slant.
And none at all is slanted away from the head.
Why are they designed to eliminate a few inches of distance between centres, instead of increasing it by the same? Does the common design increase deflection of the centre?

[Hooker53]

When you go to open a stuck door that just will not move, what's the first thing you do? You move your feet out away from the door and LEAN into it because you have more power distributed. Plus, it bridges the tooling you may have in the tailstock such as chuck a drill bit or simply your center thats holding your work. over the cross slide so you have room to move back and forth abit. Same idea with the tailstock. All mine IV ever had were setup that way. Hope that helps.

Roy
Hooker53

[Tokarev]

Not sure I follow.
So you are saying that this
Attachment 199364
is more advantageous than this?
Attachment 199365
How and why?

[Hooker53]

The thought is, it just gives you more room for your carriage to move X to Y when you are working in close to the chuck with both the cutting tool on the compound rest and your tailstock. I'v had times that I wish I had more offset. Had to break the setup down. Move the tailstock back and run out more spindal. The stronger you're setup will be with less spindal out.

Roy

[DougGuy]

If they weren't angled, you could not turn short pieces because of the carriage being in the way.