Chuck Jaws for Woodturners

Chuck jaws every Chuck comes with a basic set of Jaws that good enough for you well the answer depends on each bear varies with each woodturner but in this video I want to show you some things about jaws it'll help you make a wiser decision if you're thinking about buying some more jaws hi y'all Mike peace woodturning I'm here to share with you tips tricks and techniques to help make you a better better turner wanted if this is something that's of interest to you please subscribe and ring the notifications bell so you won't miss any future videos I want to give this shout out to James Davis for suggesting this topic thanks James I think every woodturner has personal preferences and may there may be a tendency to overstate the particular advantages or disadvantages of a particular one so I think you need to take advice with with a certain grain of salt so what what are my preferences what I'm going to cover is based on the the jaws and and and the Chuck's that I'm for me with and that I've used but a lot of the discussion will carry over and would apply equally to other manufacturers I'm using technic tool chucks because that's what what I started with and I decided to stick with them because I had a an investment in jaws that came when I bought my used mini lathe it came with a set of jaws here the jaws that I'm going to discuss and like I say in this discussion much of it will be transferable to other manufacturers whether it's a one-way or a pick mark or some other chunk manufacturer so I think one of the first considerations is what is it that you're going to turn what causes you to think you're gonna need something bigger now in general a larger tenon our larger recess sports bigger projects you know if you're gonna turn bowls like this you can't do that with your standard set of jaws it's not safe you might get away with it once or twice but it's not safe and sooner or later it's gonna it's gonna bite you but in general larger jaws from are to work smaller jaws for smaller work now I do a lot of small work and I quickly discovered that I needed a small sub jaws and as it turns out I wound up having several that came to my used mini leg but then they I found later that they weren't weren't suitable for me a second consideration is what is your budget obviously if you have an unlimited budget you can buy everything out out therefore from a particular manufacturer but most people have had constraints so that that's not a that is a serious serious factor a factor of that is for some people there's some advantage if you're starting out getting a Chuck such as the Nova infinity Chuck or the easy-easy would Chuck there's newer Chuck designs out on the market that have quick change jaws and my Chuck's are not one of them the chucks are generally considerably more expensive but you just pushing in dent or twist a button or something and the jaws come right out and you can take another set of jaws and put them right in and is a very quick change that could be a very nice feature and for some people if you're starting out although my preference is to not have to change the jaws too much by having different size different size chucks there's two types of chucks I'm aware of that have that feature there's the easy wood chuck and then there's the technic tool blade with all the Infinity Chuck and for the technic tool you can retrofit other jaws but it's not a cheap retrofit you got to buy a different set of glides and then you have to find you have to buy a set of attachments that go on every set of jaws so me it's just not worth the expense another aspect of your budget is you know is this something is the project you've got in mind is that a one-off something you're gonna do one time if so there's generally alternative ways of doing it if you're going to turn your one bfb you don't need to have a set of Jaws you could get by doing this with a faceplate jaws in general are not requirements they make things easier they make things faster into some cases they make things safer let's first talk about the standard jaws set it's going to vary from Chuck manufacturer but they're going to be approximately two inches recess or ten and oil depends on your Chuck but they're gonna be approximately two inches there are variations obviously if you get a larger Chuck such as this this tighten Chuck or if you get us one-way stronghold but your typical Chuck's they'll come with a set of jaws similar to this and that may be good enough now let's talk about the profile shape they're they're gonna vary in this particular one it has dovetail on the outside for recess and it has this very narrow what I call a hawk hawk beak very small dovetail that you don't cut when you're making a recess that manufactures very clear about that when you read their in their instructions so if you've got to take the tool don't get confused about making a tenant a recess for making a dovetail fitting for for a tenon now this set of jaws comes with all three of the the Nova Chuck's the g3 the precision MIDI as well as a supernova too and I discussed these this jaws in an earlier video where I did a review of the record power sc4 so you might want to go back and check out that that that video they also sell a set of smaller jaws similar to this now these are Patriot jaws and reason I'm mentioning this is that with with almost very few exceptions the general the one I'm going to mention jaws are not interchangeable from one manufacturer to another matter of fact even within the same manufacturer typically if you change size of the Chuck you can't use jaws from a different Chuck size even by the same manufacturer that's true of one way that's true a big mark and most of the others now there is an exception and that's the Nova Chuck so the Technic tool Chuck's they do have an interchangeable jaws set that's compatible with a Sorby Patriot and the record power Chuck's and like I say I discussed that a little bit more detail in the review of the record power so that is a consideration but if you have those particular one of those Chuck's that benefit is you don't have to but you're not restricted to the man you Factory you might find a different profile for example I bought these jars because when I bought my mini lady that came with let me back up when I got my used mini lathe and I started woodturning 11 years ago it came with this set of 35 millimeter spica jaws these long jaws these 25 millimeter jaws of course in the standard jaws I also got a set of these cold jaws and I wound up with another set of 35 millimeter bolt jaws frankly I was overwhelmed I couldn't figure out why anybody would need that many jaws says as it turns out I didn't because some of these fit me some of them I almost never never use so it turns out if you're doing smaller things you need a jaw that will fit the appropriate spigot or tenant this jaw set Nova does not make one that will hold something closer to 35 35 millimeter like this jaw set by by Sorby so I had to invest in another set of jaws this works great if you're doing a recess I don't generally use recesses and I do a lot of small things whether it's ornaments and coffee scoops and and twig pots and the list goes on I need something where I can hold a piece of wood with a tenant quite a bit smaller than than 2 inches which would be you know fit my my standard standard chuck now what I found after the fact was the the record power has a set of jaws very similar to this except these are a true dovetail on the inside the record power 35 millimeter jaws has a design similar to the standard Nova jaws that has this tiny little Hawk beak that bites into the wood and I really like this design and I wished I have known about it and I bought those jaws instead of these but but I can make do this a fine set of the jaws it just wouldn't be my preference now let's talk a little bit about how the the jaws are designed to hold wood here's an example of jaws that have serrations and you know they grip the wood tightly they also have a tiny dovetail here for smaller to hold the bottom of a bowl but you can hold something very large and get with a larger tenon and get a very very strong grip with these serrations this 35 millimeter spicket set of jaws is is very similar except it doesn't have a dovetail it's all serrations and it's designed to hold on very strongly for coliforms and and goblets that extend out in grip tightly with these these serrations others other jaws have smooth walls this one has a smooth wall on the outside and it's got a unusual little little gripping these are pin jaws these are designed to hold a piece of wood primarily for drilling but it could be used for other items with small small tendons is I've got some pin jaws these are Nova jaws they come in pairs and therefore drilling out pen blanks but they'll hold out any type of square square stock so let me show you how that works so we're gonna take this this blank and it's just gonna catch the corners so it doesn't have to be perfectly squared an FB milled lumber this is a couple of scraps of sycamores at 25 millimeter bulbs offset and the de virtually identical 35 millimeter that Nova makes also has smooth jaws on the inside but it has a dovetail on the outside this one has a dovetail on the outside this one has a dovetail on the outside for for doing a a recess this 35 millimeter as a dovetail on the outside as does the power power grip jaws but dovetail inside and out and these 100 millimeter jaws has a dovetail on the inside and the outside I don't I don't turn many pins and I don't do that much drilling of small stock so these pin jaws are are kind of a luxury but every now and then they come in in handy the spicket jaw Nova says is for work we're a long overhang is needed are hauling in to ingrain these jaws are provides superior gripping power well I don't tend to do a lot of that type of work I don't do a lot of hollow forms so they don't tend to get much much use this long set of jaws I'll show you picture how they can use they can be used for gripping on the inside of a bowl and having and getting the bowl away from the face of your your Chuck away from from the spindle to make it easier to work on them on the backside that's one feature I've also found that they can be useful sometimes when you're turning something like a large box and you can fully recess it and you have less of a chance of splitting out because the most of the force is gonna be down here and then the bottom part of the box so I use these occasionally but not not too often now these hundred millimeter jaws really Argent our recent acquisition because they came with a supernova Chuck I got a pretty good price on it one of the features of it at frankly for what I do they do very little that can't be done equally well or better with the power grip jaws which have about the same size have a dovetail inside and outside for recess or attended but I like the deeper length I can put in a square block I it it's it works for larger work if I was doing something with a very large long tenant of something of this nature I could possibly clamp down with it without even bothering to take the time to make a real fine tenon on the on the piece of work but one of the features of this particular jaw set that I thought I might use one of these days it's got these extra holes in it used for screwing in a set of false jaws made out of wood similar to what you might do if you use nova soft jaws made out of some type of call it plastic that you turn to meet your particular specifications for a given project if you had to do it for many projects it could get pretty expensive to do this but you can do something similar by making wooden wooden jaws for this chuck this is one of a four jaw mini cold set that came used otherwise I wouldn't have this I never would have bought it I hate it let me describe it more what I like about it nothing these these rubber bushings are designed to catch the lip of a bowl or if you've got a lip turned under you can you could hang the ball over but early in my turning career I didn't know how to use them I threw a few ball balls and I decided this was not for me and I quickly moved up to a vacuum vacuum Chuck and heaven looked looked back but rather than do it this way I would for reversing a bowl and finishing the bottom I'd rather use the traditional approach where you just work on the bottom with tailstock support until you get a little nub and then you just cut that off with a pocket knife or a sharp skew let's talk a little bit about capacity now to urge you to look at your manufacturers guidance but as a general rule of thumb I would not want to use Chuck jaws that are smaller than 25 this is a bare minimum 25% of the diameter so for example to inch to inch jaws you know you really shouldn't be turning anything much more than eight inches the manufacturer says you could for these jaws standard jaws you could go up to a 12 inch bowl anything larger than that and you're you're asking for trouble now with these Power Grip jaws they're much larger and bigger although this is about two inches longer than the specification it's it's great for gripping long extended projects out to say about here after they say a little over 12 inches and and that's where you get a lot of leverage so you need a lot of a lot of gripping and you can are you still gonna wind up with some some vibration but this will also handle bowls up to a 16 inch diameter and six inches thick and you couldn't get anywhere close to something like that with these standard standard jaws now one of the considerations between smooth or dovetail and serrated jaws serrated jaws are going to tend to damage the wood and if you have to take the wood out and put it back in you're going to have a very difficult time getting to run true you have a much a much better chance of running true if you're using a dovetail whether it's a recess or a or a tenon getting it to run true and if you got your tenon shape fitting it optimum size when you're with the jaws almost closed you'll get virtually no marking or damage from from a dovetail set of jaws didn't want to get into different kinds of chucks that's a that's a religious war of this Chuck versus that that Chuck I discussed a little aspects of Chuck buying in an earlier video if you instead you might want to click here and I'm not getting into the every aspect of holding wood in this video I've covered some of that before including the woodworm wood worm screw I'm interesting your comments you got any please leave them below tell me what you find your your favorite set of jaws are outside of your standard jaws y'all stay safe come on back here

Channel: Mike Peace Woodturning

Views: 16,057

Keywords: chuck jaws for woodturners, wood lathe chuck jaw selection, woodturning chuck jaws, scroll chuck, woodturning projects, wood turning lathe, wood lathe, Woodturning lathe, lathe tool, wood turning, beginning woodturning, mike peace woodturner, Mike Peace, woodturning chucking methods, woodturning tools, woodturning, basic woodturning, 4 jaw chuck, scroll chuck for wood lathe, scroll chuck jaws, using a scroll chuck, how to hold wood on a lathe, mike peace woodturning

Id: BPavFZlniAQ

Length: 16min 54sec (1014 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 01 2018