What are the Realistic Expectations from a Chuck

Hey Kerry, good to see you drop in. I was just thinking about you the other day and wondering what you were up to. :wave:
 
I have a Grizzly knock-off of a Vicmark chuck.
I have a Talon chuck.

I have a problem removing a piece from the chuck and getting it remounted so that it is still centered.
I do mark the chuck jaw and the wood so that relationship is constant.
I do not have trouble with spindle work.

...
Sorry if I'm late in jumping in, but like Vaughn has said I have never expected to be able to remount a wood piece back on a lathe and expect it to run true,* even if the jaws were perfectly aligned each time the wood will more than likely have moved as the compressed fibres relaxed.
Yes it is nice to have a quality engineered chuck but as long as it grips the piece securely without movement whilst shaping does it really matter if it's a more cheaply engineered model?

Of the various chucks I have, I would say the one more or less permanently fitted with my Cole Jaws has the most 'slop' in the carrier grooves but it always centres a reversed piece true enough to clean up the base on its scroll, easily within the natural movement of the piece that has occurred during turning.


I don't even expect that to happen on my metal working lathe close enough to pick up an already turned surface.


And Kerry, That's the sort of base finishing that gets my vote.
 
I don't know which Grizzly chuck you have but the one I have I've been more than pleased with http://www.grizzly.com/products/H6265

When I was looking for chucks I discarded the Nova (threads turn counter clockwise) because of a hand being crushed at work a few years ago and I can't get any leverage twisting that direction.

I know a friend who has a Powermatic with a Talon on it and he has a couple of Grizzly's chucks on a Nova and a Delta and he says he has had no problems with them. What persuaded me to get a Grizzly.

That being said, I do not make the nice bowls and platters and things like you folks, but the few I have done I just mark where the number one jaw is on the blank and have not had much issue getting it aligned.
 
I've got a couple of Nova chucks, and had a PSI Barracuda at one point, too. In my experience, 80%+ of the time, a blank that has been removed from the chuck will not re-mount perfectly true, no matter how careful I am or how accurately I mark the previous jaw locations. I stopped worrying about it, and now I simply plan on taking a few truing passes to make things round again after a re-mounting. I think both of my Novas have a bit of slop in the jaws when loose, but once tightened, they definitely run true.

As an aside, and this is strictly personal opinion, but I really dislike seeing a foot on a bowl that was an obvious tenon. Similarly, I don't like seeing a recess that still has jaw marks on it. (I really don't like seeing a recess at all, jaw marks or no.) In both cases, it simply makes the piece look unfinished and amateurish. If I lived closer to you Jim, I'd show you some ways to turn that tenon all the way off, or turn enough of it away to where it no longer looks like a tenon. ;)

I'm with Vaughn, what I tend to do is produce a bead for the foot that exactly fit the chuck will use to turn the in side. Now the bead is not that strong and will peel off the bowl if your not careful. So what I do is run CA around the bead and leave it over night to fully set. One of the characteristic I have found is that instant CA is not as strong as CA that requires a longer time to go off. Occasionally the chuck will leave a faint mark on the foot , this I remove at the end with fine sandpaper. The amount that is sanded off usually off so small its not noticeable.

As to put a foot on or not for depends on the form of late I have tended to add a foot most of them... bit of a phase I guess :D
 
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