DIY Chuck Insert Rings....

When I do the small square bowls I enjoy so much, I've started to use some chuck insert rings, and I make them myself, because I'm cheap, and they are easy to make.




I use cheap cutting board for this...


I cut pieces that are 5.5 cm square


Mark the center and then with a forstner bit I drill about 1/4" deep (6mm)


Then using my pin jaws on my Nova G3 chuck, I mount and turn the pieces round, for this whole operation, I only use my parting tool.


In this case just about 5cm, which is just over what my SN2 chuck with the standard jaws will hold. Notice that I mount the piece with the hole from the forstner bit inside, towards the headstock of the lathe.


I turn it so the center piece pops out then I make the step that is about 1/4" deep or so, that will softly and gently grab the tenon on a work piece, without marking it up like the regular steel jaws would.


I then remove it from the lathe and cut a slot in it, the piece I remove is about 1/8" or so.


Back mounted in the chuck, you can see that if you put a tenon in there you can just snug up on it and hold it tight, while not marking the tenon.

I learned this from Eli Avisera of Israel, it is a super cool little trick and dead easy to make a bunch of different sizes for different projects.

Cheers!

Cool idea. I'll stick it in the "handy tricks to know" file. I've got a couple sets of Nova soft jaws, but only recently tried them out. They worked great on an ebony finial so far. I've also considered making my own from a block of UHMD plastic I have on hand, but haven't had the need yet.

Yep, very useful, and you can, within reason, make them any size to fit any jawset, so if you need a set of jaws to grip something that is say 1" in diameter, but you only have jaws that go down to 1 3/4" you can make one of these rings to work like an adapter.

I don't know how that UHMD stuff turns, I've not tired it, the cutting board turns easy, but you have to be careful, the strings from it often don't fly away, but kind of stick to the chuck, and that can get dangerous, so I stop the lathe fairly often, and clean the strings off the lathe.

Cheers!

Very good idea that Stu. Thanks for sharing and the how to tutorial.

I was turning some cherry dowels to plug up some holes the other day and kept trying to figure out a way to do this without marring the good end of the dowel. I tried blue painters tape but its too soft and i did not feel it clamped safe. This is more like a collet so i will give it a try. Great idea. Thanks for mentioning the source, now we start to see how he influenced everyone.

This is one of those things that is so simple that we want to bang ourselves in the head and say, "Why didn't I think of that?". Thanks for sharing it with us Stu. Definately one for the "Just In Case" file.

Cool Stu. Thanks for sharing.