Buckeye Vessel and Jaw Question ?

Well I was going to spend a few hours doing a bit of turning and it turned out to be most of the day. I put a pc of Buckeye up on the lathe and made a tennon for my supernova power grip jaws. Then reversed it and noticed that I made it a bit to small - very slightly to small. So I thought what the heck let me try something.....I ripped several strips of duct tape and wrapped it around the tennon and thought it may hold without slipping. It did hold very well and gave me the extra thickness to hold the vessel. I got lucky because I really did not think it would hold up.
However, I noticed that when I tightened up the jaws they seemed to have a slight /\ v shape in the jaws so I opened them up and made sure the set screws were tight and they were. There is a bit of play in them when nothing is in them but - meaning if you grab one jaw with your fingers you can wiggle each jaw just a tad.................On the other side of things they seem to hold fine and no slipping........So im not sure if this is a issue or just the way they are.............Thoughts ???????

Hollowed with my Monster rig and the new laser Randy sent....nice to have that bright light back...old one was dimming on me......

Pictures below of the vessel - finished sanded to 400 and two coats of formbys tung
Chuck Jaws with a small widen gab as I mentioned
Thanks Dan

I've not used duct tape yet, but I had a dried bowl last week where the tenon had gone oval during the drying process, but the bowl was a bit too big to reverse and true up the tenon. (It had warped to about 21" x 19"...just a bit too big to spin over the bed.) I ended up sliding the headstock to the end of the bed so the piece could clear, and used a couple strips of folded 80 grit sandpaper to fill in the spots where the tenon had warped away from the chuck jaws. That held things in place long enough for me to trim off the high spots on the rim enough that it could fit over the lathe bed. Once It was trimmed down a bit, I slid the headstock back into the normal position and reversed the bowl (with the tailstock holding it in place) to properly true up the tenon. (Although once I got the tenon trued up, the gaps on my Power Grip jaws were even smaller than the ones you show in the pics. A smidgeon smaller, and I'd have needed some duct tape myself.)

Dan Mosley said:

However, I noticed that when I tightened up the jaws they seemed to have a slight /\ v shape in the jaws so I opened them up and made sure the set screws were tight and they were. There is a bit of play in them when nothing is in them but - meaning if you grab one jaw with your fingers you can wiggle each jaw just a tad.................On the other side of things they seem to hold fine and no slipping........So im not sure if this is a issue or just the way they are.............Thoughts ???????
Dan

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Dan,
I've wrapped the masking tape on a tenon and on the jaws when doing inside recessed tenon when I didn't want to mar the wood... works fine for me.
On the jaws having play... I two of the PSI C2000 chucks.. think they are called Barracuda's... not sure, but the jaw inserts.. the things that are threaded to move in and out of the body of mine are all a little loose... I've even opened the jaws too far and had the pieces fall out.. it's really annoying when they fall into the pile of chips under the lathe and you have to spend 30 minutes sifting through the chips to find it again
The looseness doesn't seem to affect the hold any.

BTW that's a sweet looking vessel...

Chuck Ellis said:

Dan,
I've wrapped the masking tape on a tenon and on the jaws when doing inside recessed tenon when I didn't want to mar the wood... works fine for me.
On the jaws having play... I two of the PSI C2000 chucks.. think they are called Barracuda's... not sure, but the jaw inserts.. the things that are threaded to move in and out of the body of mine are all a little loose... I've even opened the jaws too far and had the pieces fall out.. it's really annoying when they fall into the pile of chips under the lathe and you have to spend 30 minutes sifting through the chips to find it again
The looseness doesn't seem to affect the hold any.

BTW that's a sweet looking vessel...

Click to expand...

I can find the steel parts that I dropped in 1 minute or less ,I use a magnet [harbor freight ]

Chuck - - thanks for the compliment - the buckeye was really dry and i almost decided twice not to turn it - it was like turning concrete and pc's of the buckeye fly off easily - but I knew about flying sections from previous buckeye and put the grated safety guard on it - which saves me from alot of larger flying pc's comming off.
As near as i can tell the slides are tight and work fine - it may be like Vaughn was saying about the warp but im going to turn another vessel today......... im hoping and im going to take another look to see if it still does it...........................ill post later...............thanks everybody

That chunk o buckeye is so gnarly ugly that it's beautiful!

As usual, I'm clueless, but I sure want to see what comes of it.

Good looking vessel, I haven't tried a hollow form that large yet.

I did go out the the shop and check my chucks. On my SN2 I have the powergrips also, and on my G3 the 50mm. Opened they both have about the same amount of play (looseness), when tightened they will not budge at all.
The jaws are tight to the jaw slides. I think play is because the slide is loose against the pinion.
I am assuming they are made that way to give a little clearance for the pinions to work.

ray hampton said:

I can find the steel parts that I dropped in 1 minute or less ,I use a magnet [harbor freight ]

Click to expand...

I keep threatening to buy one every time I drop something into the chip pile... but Harbor Freight is an hours drive away to the north or south... benefits of living in the boonies??

I lose metal parts so often I've got several magnetic picker uppers.

1) a little hand held jobbie for stuff on the bench.
2) a little one with ~3' handle for getting stuff up off the floor.
3) a 36" wide one with wheel's for cleaning up the gravel driveway. The previous owners left what I believe to be thousands of screws and nails in the driveway. They had their kids put together a 'fence' of sorts and the nails and screws the kids pounded into it seem to jump out and land on the driveway, so every now and then I need to clean it up. My dad has taken walks up and down the driveway and handed me pocketfulls of nails...

Dan Mosley said:

... it may be like Vaughn was saying about the warp but im going to turn another vessel today...

Click to expand...

My comment about the warp wasn't about the buckeye. It was about trying to grab an oval tenon, and the fact that 80 grit sandpaper works as a shim. I don't think that's the issue you had at all.