Making a Donut Chuck

Vaughn McMillan

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Most of the "how-to" posts have a whole series of pics showing you how to make something. This one will show you how NOT to make something. :D

I'm working on a piece that needed a donut chuck to finish off the bottom. It's long and tall enough I didn't want to risk using the vacuum chuck.

I started out with a round piece of plywood, 18" in diameter. Mounted that on a faceplate, drew some circles, clamped a smaller round piece of scrap particle board to the plywood, and drilled four holes. I screwed the two pieces together, and spun it up on the lathe to cut out the hole in the "donut" part of the chuck. Unfortunately, up to this point I didn't take any pics.

Anyway, here's how it looked when I was done cutting the hole out of the donut:

Donut Chuck 1 800.jpg

No problem, nice clean cut (for particle board). Unfortunately, I had to go outside to pick up the piece that I cut out of the center. It left the shop in sort of a hurry:

Donut Chuck 2 800.jpg

Only after I stopped laughing did I go in the house and get the camera. :p

If I'm standing at the headstock of the lathe facing the bed, that window is right behind me. But for this cut, I was standing well off to the side (at the back end of a 24" handle with another foot or so of boring bar attached to that), so I wasn't even close to the line of fire.

I guess you could say I got two donuts for the price of one. The good news is the donut chuck worked fine. The piece finished up nicely, and will be worth replacing the window for. (This one is very special...pics and more story in a few days.)
 
Vaughn, that must have gotten your attention. You just never know when something is going to fly off when working on a lathe. Sorry about the window but at least you were not hurt.

If I were you I would not have the bolts protruding through on the side where you are working. One careless second and your arm or hand could be drawn into a merciless cheese grater. Far better to have the head of the bolt on the side where you are turning. IMHO.
 
...If I were you I would not have the bolts protruding through on the side where you are working. One careless second and your arm or hand could be drawn into a merciless cheese grater. Far better to have the head of the bolt on the side where you are turning. IMHO.
Good point, Mike. ;) I agree and do just that when I'm actually using a donut chuck. In this case though, the shortest bolts I had were still a bit too long to clear the headstock, so I put them in backwards, knowing they needed to be watched carefully. That's a lot of the reason I used a long tool from a distance away. I also intentionally had the bolts on the outer edge of the donut, to keep them away from where I needed to cut.
 
Ya know, it just dawned on me...

The tailstock would have prevented the whole thing. Doh! doesn't quite cover it. Ah well, I'll know next time. Hopefully someone else will learn from my stupidity. :bang: :p
 
Glad you could laugh at it Vaughn....I did too! :wave:

Maybe you should take this opportunity to vent your dust collector outside.:D
 
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