Thread: Chucks for shopnotes lathe

Normally items such as jacob's chucks, mandrels, etc. are mounted on morse tapers. ie. the shafts on head- & tail-stock ends are hollow, with internal tapers.

However, you may be able to fit a 'proper' woodturning chuck to your layout.

I assume that you know what the thread size & pitch are on your headstock? Most good quality woodturning chucks have adapters to suit a variety of threads, so when you purchase the chuck you also select the right adapter for your lathe... and as/when you need other adapters you can buy them to suit other lathes.

I have seen thread adapters which are basically 'blanks' that you can tap to suit your own size if it's something esoteric... but I don't recommend this unless you have a good machine shop to do the tooling in.

Once you have a decent chuck, you can make jigs which are held by the chuck to hold other doodads. (Basically, hold a wooden blank that's drilled out in imitation of a morse taper.)

This is not as accurate as having a proper Morse taper, but with care in construction should be close... and would give you the option of trying out some of the extra doodads that we've all come to take for granted.

G'luck and may all your turnings be round, except when you don't want them to be!

Thanks Skew - Was hoping that something would be possible and that seems to be the case. Will educate myself further in the near future.

Bill

As skew has saidyou canuse a chuck and the threaded piece he is talking about is called an insert most of the wood turning supply firms sell them but if you have to get a blank one threaded for your head stock make sure you use the best firm you can find to do the job or it will NOT run true and that the new thread registers so the chuck stops before your bearing .I have just had another look at your photo you could have it register against the color if it is secure.

Ian

Originally Posted by Skew ChiDAMN!!

This is not as accurate as having a proper Morse taper, but with care in construction should be close... and would give you the option of trying out some of the extra doodads that we've all come to take for granted.

G'luck and may all your turnings be round, except when you don't want them to be!

Hello,

Found this thing lurking on a web page, seems like it might be helpful and for $5 might be worth playing with

Morse Taper #2 adapter, 1-1/16" shank, 1" ext, 70836 - NIB

If only it was a bit longer I could use it as the main drive piece on the headstock instead of my threaded bolt. May be able to extend it somehow.

Will go and continue my education on Google

<Edited> and I did, and found this thing - see attached photo and web page is here

Fullsize Page 88 of Advanced Drilling Equipment

getting warm now

Bill

I bought the 33mm to 1 X 8 tpi for my lathe. It came with a female #2 Morse Taper in the end.

Spindle Adapters at Penn State Industries

You may find the same in AU. Check with chuck makers.

Hello,

After finishing the lathe and actually using it I understand a few things a bit better now.

Havent been able to find the right sort of off the shelf adaptors for chucks and morse tapers.

So have been googling home made chucks ....... have seen a few things that look like this

hand made 4 jaw chuck for lathe - Woodworking Talk - Woodworkers Forum

Don't particularly like this concept - has anybody managed to do it safely ?

This one looked a bit more robust.

http://home.comcast.net/~kvaughn65/mini_chuck_use.jpg

My drive shaft is a 20mm diameter metric threaded bolt. Photo in posts above.

Have made a screw chuck and face plate by burying hexagonal nuts in plywood discs - works quite well.

Can see that a chuck could be a nice thing to have in the future - nearly weakened and bought a 2nd hand lathe for $650 recently but would like to pursue the home made jobbie a bit further and learn a bit more before buying one.

So all you genius jigologists, got any favourite web sites or books you can point me at regarding building chucks ?

Have found the idea of Glue chucks in my searches - that might be the way I proceed.

Bill