Need some help finding a bowl chuck

Tom Baugues

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Lafayette, Indiana
I have made many small items over the years...pens..yo-yo's and such but I would like to start making a few larger items such as small bowls, vases, potpourri pots and such. Now here is the catch....don't laugh at me...I'm new here and cry easily...lol. Anyway..my lathe is a Ryobi mini lathe that I bought about 15 years ago. It runs well and has worked well for what I did with it. I want to try to use it to turn these larger items. I think I can turn up to 8" on it. It only came with a small faceplate. I think it has a 3/4" 16 TPI shaft. I would like to find a simple yet good chuck that I can use instead of this faceplate. Can anyone suggest something. If anyone has something used that they would like to sell I would be open for that as well.

Tom
 

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Tom,
You are going to get lots of suggestions, so here's mine.. check out the PSI small chucks... I have three of their chucks.. 1 is the 3" CMGC3 that came with 3 or 4 jaws and 2 of the barracuda 2, CSC2000 (I think) (didn't see this version in the catalog). All of min use the tommy bars.. if you can swing the extra go for the single key like the CSC3000. I think they all come with an adapter to fit your spindle. My lathes are both Jets with the 1 x 8tpi spindles. My first lathe was a Ridgid with the 3/4 x 16 tpi and I used the CMGC3 on it with an adapter. These are pretty good low end chucks and will work as starters....
 
Good reply from Chuck. I will add because you have a faceplate you may be able to use a glue block to turn the inside of a bowl. Screw a (rounded) block (with an exposed tendon) to the faceplate, and glue the tendon to the bottom of your bowl blank. After hollowing, use a jam chuck and your tail stock to finish the bottom.
 
That being said I really like my Woodcraft 4-Jaw Chuck. They have it in 3/4" X 16, on sale for $78. I've had one for my Jet Mini and can't find anything wrong with it. While it uses Tomy Bars I like that because I can load a blank without having to use a tool to get the blank onto the chuck.



That's a good price on that chuck.. it looks very similar to the Barracuda II that I got from PSI at about the same price - on sale. Local Woodcraft has just changed ownership and I think running some sales.. may have to take a trip to K'ville. I could use another chuck.. I would like to set them up with a different set of jaws on each so I don't have to change them so often.... and I would like to get a set of the bigger jaws so I can use larger tenons on some of my bigger bowls.
 
Thanks Chuck and Frank for your help. I went to Indianapolis over the weekend and went to the Woodcraft store there and picked up the "Wood River" chuck. It was on sale and seems to be made very well. I brought it home and mounted it on my cheapo-lathe and now have thoughts of getting a better bigger lathe. Oh well...first things first. I think that will have to wait for now. Now I just need to get some blanks cut up.

Tom
 
Tom that sure does look like a great deal on that chuck, way to go!

My first chuck was very similar from Grizzly for my old C-man tube bed lathe, I did a fair bit of turning on it :thumb:

While you certainly may want to upgrade from you little Ryobi, do think about keeping it, if you have the space (heck you can hang that one on the wall!) as it is nice to have a second lathe that you can use for smaller stuff, things like pens etc, if you get into that. In fact, I bet you could finance some of the New Better lathe fund with pens etc off of that Ryobi lathe.

Just thinking out loud here :D :wave:

Cheers!
 
Yes, I bought this lathe about 15 years ago to do just that...make pens and such. I had no thought back then of ever turning anything big so was perfectly happy with this machine as it really does an ok job for small turnings. I have sold many of them but not nearly enough to buy a newer "good" lathe. LOL
I have too many hobbies going on at the same time right now...I need to thin out something. I have about 10 RC cars and trucks that I think I'll sell. That might make a good down payment on something.

Tom
 
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