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  1. #1
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    Unhappy Made a small set of jaws to fit a wood lathe chuck.

    I bought a small Vicmark VL120 wood lathe chuck to fit a Vicmark VL300 lathe that I am working on, the chuck came with a standard set of jaws which close up to approx., 50mm diameter.

    So I wanted a smaller set which would grab smaller pieces of wood. Got a piece of 1040 or 1041 round and machined it down to shape to fit inside the existing jaw set. The internal jaws of the standard set are angled about 10 degrees so machined the out side with that angle to help grip these and then drilled out a 6mm hole to fit a longer screw to hold them in place and then drilled a 13mm hole about 17mm off the bottom. That way I could use a shorter screw.

    Not sure of the exact number of the steel but it sure was tough, ended up using solid tungsten carbide drills. I must have resharpened my standard drill bits about 8 times before that. Should have stuck to plain old mild steel as I probably have dulled my band saw blade.<label for="rb_iconid_9"></label>

    Took a while to cut it up on the band-saw into quarters and fitted it to the chuck, it will close down to 17mm and it will open up quite wide but then the radius changes the wider it opens up and the edges really dig in.
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  3. #2
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    Quote Originally Posted by Ed.. View Post
    Not sure of the exact number of the steel but it sure was tough, ended up using solid tungsten carbide drills. I must have resharpened my standard drill bits about 8 times before that. Should have stuck to plain old mild steel as I probably have dulled my band saw blade.<label for="rb_iconid_9"> </label>
    Good job on the chuck jaws.

    Yeah there's no need to use hard steel unless you are going to be using the jaws every day of the week.
    I've even used brass to make sets of jaws.

    The inner sides of these jaws are rawhide lined and grip stuff down to ~12mm and even oddly shaped small spindle work as just gentle pressure is needed to securely hold the work.

    Jawsonchuckonlathe.jpg

    These ones are 90 mm when closed up.
    sideopen.jpg

  4. #3
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    Hi BobL, Thanks, although I like your jaws with the leather in the top pic better, are they held on by just one screw on the outside? and if they are, do the jaws try to open up outwards at high RPM's?

    Yeah, I didn't realize what a P.I.T.A that steel I used would be, I was given a couple of small pieces of steel to try out by a supplier I go to, as I wasn't planning on heat hardening it I didn't expect it to this hard in its raw state, during the machining stage it wasn't a problem as I used carbide inserts and it machined up nicely, it's only when I started to drill it that I realized how hard it was. As the drill became blunt it must have been work hardening the steel because of the friction heat, the more I pushed the harder and hotter it got, and the quicker the drills dulled, it reminded me of drilling stainless steel but much harder.

    Good idea using the leather to close up the size a bit, if I need to go down smaller than the 17mm I might borrow your idea, although having said that I can't imagine making anything that small on a lathe this size, do you use the 12mm on pen blanks or something else. What brand and size is your yellow lathe?

    Cheers

    Ed.

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    I like it

    DaveTTC
    The Turning Cowboy
    Turning Wood Into Art

  6. #5
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    Quote Originally Posted by Ed.. View Post
    Hi BobL, Thanks, although I like your jaws with the leather in the top pic better, are they held on by just one screw on the outside? and if they are, do the jaws try to open up outwards at high RPM's?
    Yes they are held on by one screw but I've not experienced any "opening up" problems. The jaws were deliberately made about twice as thick as their steel equivalents to counteract this problem and they don't need to be tightened very hard to generate enough grip. It's not like I use them for HD roughing out - see below for usage.

    Good idea using the leather to close up the size a bit
    I often use rawhide leather strips in between jaws and small wooden work pieces in chucks. I have some home made nylon jaws that I use to hold PVC pipe while its being turned/parted/squared etc (slow speeds only). The tailstock has a custom made steady that rides inside the pipe to hold the PVC pipe level but the grip between the PVC and nylon is poor so I use a thin strip of bike inner tubing rubber held in place by an elastic band to improve the friction.

    The two steps in the jaws are for 50 and 100 mm diameter pipe.

    SoftJaws2.jpg


    . . ., if I need to go down smaller than the 17mm I might borrow your idea, although having said that I can't imagine making anything that small on a lathe this size, do you use the 12mm on pen blanks or something else.
    I don't go to that size very often and when I do it's usually for SWMBO's wooden jewellery/beads. More commonly these jaws are used to hold things like small knives or letter opener handles while I finish up and polish the parted ends

    What brand and size is your yellow lathe?
    Its the Woodfast midi and it has a VFD and 1HP motor on it.

  7. #6
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    I just wasn't sure if a single 6mm screw would be able to hold the jaw to the chuck if you revved it up to 2500-3000 rpm polishing a pen blank or something as the centrifugal force would be fairly strong, I would hate to be near it if the single screw snapped and the jaw flew out. That is the reason why I made the bottom of mine to be gripped on the outside by the standard jaws, but obviously I was unnecessarily concerned.

  8. #7
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    Quote Originally Posted by Ed.. View Post
    I just wasn't sure if a single 6mm screw would be able to hold the jaw to the chuck if you revved it up to 2500-3000 rpm polishing a pen blank or something as the centrifugal force would be fairly strong, I would hate to be near it if the single screw snapped and the jaw flew out. That is the reason why I made the bottom of mine to be gripped on the outside by the standard jaws, but obviously I was unnecessarily concerned.
    The Teknatool Pen Jaw set oney uses one screw per jaw
    https://www.carbatec.com.au/woodturn.../nova-pen-jaws

  9. #8
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    Quote Originally Posted by BobL View Post
    The Teknatool Pen Jaw set oney uses one screw per jaw
    https://www.carbatec.com.au/woodturn.../nova-pen-jaws
    That one actually has two screws, although the screw isn't visible there is hole in each jaw that has a screw that goes down it's length. Middle of second paragraph describes it in this link below.

    NOVA Pen Plus Jaw Set

    Cheers

  10. #9
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    The Vicmarc pen jaws look very close to the Nova ones. The Vicmarc pen jaws also have two holes for two bolts; I know as I have them.

    https://vicmarc.com/index.php?option...=17&Itemid=449

    The 25mm pin jaws from Vicmarc only have one bolt hole, the thrust of what Vicmarc seem to be saying with these is that they are generally used for expansion, thereby pushing the jaws towards the bolt hole end.

    If you do use these for compression holding, then their main strength is usually for very tiny things. I have these as well used them this week for expansion, then compression on a very small spigot which was on a drawer knob that needed to be reshaped to match the other three on a set of drawers. Worked well for that, which is the first time I have used them on compression.

    https://vicmarc.com/index.php?option...=17&Itemid=449

    By the way, nice job for the VL20 lathe chuck jaws.

    Mick.

  11. #10
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    Quote Originally Posted by Ed.. View Post
    That one actually has two screws, although the screw isn't visible there is hole in each jaw that has a screw that goes down it's length. Middle of second paragraph describes it in this link below.
    Thanks for that. There are others on the teknatool website that have only one screw and they also state "All NOVA Chuck accessory jaws are designed to hold in the expansion and contraction modes".

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