LONGWORTH CHUCK, Very VERY easy to build, instructional video shows you how.

hello friends welcome again to my shop today where i share great ideas the idea that i want to share with you today is something that's been around for quite a long time it's called the longworth chuck and it's used to turn the bottoms help to turn the bottoms of bowls now there's a lot of other things out there that you can do that with that people are using a lot there's something called cold jaws and then of course there's the friction chuck where it just uh you have to lay the piece of wood that pops onto there all those are excellent ideas but uh i find uh the longworth chuck is super good it's fast and easy it's very very cheap to make and i didn't make one for many years because it looked kind of complicated but after i decided to do it i found it quite easy there's lots of good information on the uh other youtube channels there but i thought i'd step you through the uh making one because sometimes you pick up one thing from somebody and then pick up some other things from somebody else but i'll try to be a little clear i was on the web and somebody asked about making one and they somebody responded to so don't even bother they're they're not the greatest and uh there's cold jaws and so on and so forth but if you go to cold jaws you have to pretty well dedicate a chuck uh for that purpose it's i find that uh trying to change jaws on chucks is just uh pain and it takes up time and and it's nice to have something that's just plain dedicated to what you're doing and that works well the only disadvantage i see on this is that you still have to use a tail stock to hold the uh bold i guess probably depending on the shape of the sides to do the lathe work on the bottom but then you can take your tail stock back and and uh you just sand to your heart's content on it it works super well when i first got it going i had a bunch of bowls that i hadn't got around to doing the bottom so before long i had half a dozen bowls that had real nice bottoms on there it's real it's actually a joy to use so anyway i'll uh show you what materials to use and how to go about it so just stay tuned and we'll get busy at it right away let's talk a little bit about materials before we get started here uh you can use probably most anything plywood would work work well a lot of people use plywood i'm using mdf and i highly recommend that and that cost shouldn't be a problem on that because if you go to a local cabinet shop they have pieces that they're throwing away every day and pieces that i have here came from advantage cabinets anyway just what i had this is a piece of half inch mdf and uh it's got the melamine on one side that's no problem i'm going to leave i'm going to do my layout on this side so you can see the lines better so what you do is you can go corner to corner to find the center and uh then draw one line corner to corner and then of course the other direction also will find the direction the center but uh when you have this line done on then i've taken a square to get a line 90 degrees if you notice this one doesn't line up to the point it lines up over here and that's because this piece is slightly rectangle so don't rely on your piece going corner to corner for to get a 90 degree uh angle in here but if you have a accurately cut one of course you can do that too and then i drill a little hole in here to hold the compass which is a good idea i've also did it here and here the we also need a line 45 degrees here exactly in half here that comes through there so you'll have a line this way and a line this way as well now the other piece of mdf i have that came from the cabinet shop too is a piece of it's got wood on both sides nice mahogany on each side but they throw it away why not use it doesn't this makes a nicer two pieces there you want the reason i'm recommending mdf uh is because when you go to the routing stage it just routes to cut the slots in at the routing just goes so nice in the mdf it's really really easy and that's one of the parts that you know people don't make these too often because that looks just too complicated but it's super easy it's really easy anyway um yeah so i bisect how do you protect an angle this is one way to get it exactly halfway between use your compass and put a little line there you can just adjust the compass anywhere to stay on your work there and that crosses right there so now it's just a matter we'll see how accurate we are here that goes right through the center i did both of them i think it's a good idea to do to do the both sides and then you can check so you don't have any errors and once you've put your first diagonal which was here you could put your compass here and uh bisect that angle too okay um i've drawn a circle on here which you may be able to see and i'm going to cut that out i drew the circle a little bigger than my piece here because we're going to lathe it round and it gives a little material to to round down and you'll see the reason for that fairly soon okay i've cut the both circles out cut the bottom piece out using the same compass setting and mark the center here with the drill so the compass doesn't slip out then i measured the diameter of the [Music] face plate that i'm going to use and uh drew a circle on there the same size as the uh thing there that way i can put this on and screw that on right smack in the center there so i'll go ahead and do that and then we'll be ready to the next step okay i've got the face plate uh put on there and here's a little trick not a trick but another idea that i i do is uh make your own face plates you just take a a one inch nut and then you get a lar washer and one of the large washers when you it'll just touch catch the corners of the nut and it's all clamped down and you just have somebody put a little bit of weld on there or do it yourself if you have a welder and then you drill your holes in and i think it costs probably four dollars for uh all steel face plates uh i make up quite a number of them so you don't have to you can dedicate one to something it doesn't matter what it is but anyway um use the largest screws that you can preferably not to come through the outside but in my case the little tips here just barely pushed the that wood up there just took a little grinder and uh took the tips off there and that gives me a a good hold with the screw you know because you know you're not just you you're holding the whole uh thickness of your wood that's it's quite important because you're going to be using this thing for a long time and uh try to get it centered of course there [Music] oh yeah i put it on and i took it off again and then put a little some ca glue in the holes where i screwed it on there and then screwed it on again so that kind of locks it up tight and maybe strengthens the material in there where the screw goes into so so the next step here will to be mount this on the lathe and then and then we'll screw our pattern on there now i don't recommend just putting that on screwing it onto that top of that even though you've marked it out uh with a compass with the same setting there because it's important to get this where we laid the circles out uh right on on center there so and to screw it on um first time i did i just used three screws and just kind of put it anywhere i thought but that's not a that worked but the trouble was when i was cutting the slots some of them interfered with the slot so after i've of course i had the slots all done and then you need holes for your finger to put in there to rotate it and uh since i've got it done i just circle went through put it in the right position and uh drew the circles on there you can see that there so uh let's just take a measurement there if you got your your cross like this and you're going around like that and your hole here comes out fairly nicely at one and a quarter inches one and a quarter inches from the uh from the line there or the center of it there that might be something to go with the reason i want to do that is i'll put my screw here to screw it together then when it's all done take it apart and then i'll take that wood right out there on the top one for my finger holes and you'll never know it was ever screwed together just a hint there an idea you might consider that but that's an inch and a quarter off from one of your cross ones there like that okay so i'm going to get this screwed on the lathe and i'll show you how to screw this on here okay i've got the mounted on the lathe the first disc with the face plate there now we want to screw this one that has our lines on there to that right exactly in the center now uh if you wanted to to just put it on if you didn't have any lines you could just get it all screwed together exactly center right away and then put your lines on after but it seemed to be a little easier when you got your square piece and you go core to corner and layout and so on and so forth there but it's important to get it center now i didn't go through all this when i made the first one here so uh you can see some of the errors i did and trying to steer you in the right direction there so just with it held in your lathe and i've put the screws where i've figured out where the little hand thumb holes for your fingers to adjust it are now i'm just going to go ahead and screw it on and then we'll be able to go to the next step which i'll be showing you in a minute okay i've gone ahead and started my layout there i don't know yeah you should be able to see that there since i want to make a duplicate of the first one that i've made i've used the same measurements now the outer line that i have here is just to round it out and i use the same dimensions here just whatever you're making it you can make it for any size lathe you want so you just have a round piece that fits your lathe and then you need two circles now the first circle here could anywhere be say three quarters of an inch or an inch from the outside or a couple centimeters if you go by centimeters and then you need a a line somewhere out from the center there and i used two and three quarters or in this case here it would be let's see seven centimeters seven centimeters uh and that could vary you want it to be bigger than the face plate that you're using a little bit bigger than the face plate that you're using so those are just you can just kind of do that arbitrarily where you you like it there and then the next line that you have to have a line that's equal distance between the inner one and the outer one so if i measure that it just so happens i'm going to use that scale there it comes out to seven centimeters centimeters kind of work well that's so i'm going to turn it on a line i'll just get a little closer there so you can see what's going on there there you can see our lines now the uh this is we're going to lay this material off to here and then that's their outer one that'll determine how far out the slots go and this one determines how far in they go and uh and this one is for uh setup and that's all there is to it very super simple uh two lines arbitrarily on your surface and then one halfway between of course you've got your vertical two sets of lines 90 degrees apart or 45 degrees between each line there so anyway i'll go ahead and lay this down here now and uh then we'll go to the next step we're almost done well so far it's been a walk in the park uh very simply all we've done is taken a a disc that fits our lathe and uh mounted a face plate to it used two pieces of wood laid them around and uh then we made a circle in the center that was bigger than our face plate and one around the outside that's in a ways and then the only other one that we had to use a little bit of math one was this one here which is equal distance between the inner and the outer line there so all we had to do was divide by two and that's not too too hard and uh we've screwed them together and so we got solid we've mounted them so they're centered and we drew these lines on the lathe which is a good idea i didn't do that in the first one and it you get more precise if you do it like i've showed you there and then on these intersection points where we had our 90 and then the 45s that we put on there so we got uh the eight lines there 45 degrees apart you could use a protractor i use the square you use the principle as inter dividing a line with a compass there intersection point and what i've done here on on the uh wherever this center line is i marked it with a a pointed tool because that's where we're going to use our compass from that's where we're going to use to swing our router from too and then i've i've drilled it to the size of a of a nail any nail that you think might work so so that nail will fit right inside there and that will be used when we do our routing a very simple idea so that's all there is to it then uh we could just go from here and just go ahead and route it but it's nice to put the lines on there and you can see what you're doing so i've i've put on a couple here uh let's see we'll go from here and let's hear this one here okay so most of your instructions will call tangent to the center line so that just is that distance there and then we swing our compass out to the outer the outer line there and we'll put on four lines so that's that one and then we'll switch to this one here and we must have one more to put on here to get the wrong way here anyway i got okay i'll set it down and then i'll put the last one on there but you just need four lines that swing between here and there and then we'll show you the next four arcs to put on there okay i've put the four lines on take any axis you want just the 90 degree axis and draw your line so they tangent to the center one there now we're going to put on the other four lines now i've already put one on here use it right in here and brought it down to the line uh to the inside line now if we wrote a slot through here we route another slot all the way to here it's not very much wood in here so it could be a little bit weak there but and it's got a back plate it'd probably be okay so i'm just going from pictures that i've seen what other people have do so they do another set that's shorter and you can decide that for yourself but what i did again is just divided the distance between the center and your next line in half and that's and then you can draw another circle around there like that i think i can do this okay now that one that i just put on there i think it's this one here we'll stop here rather than there so we'll just go to the next one we have to skip one here and put one in so okay and we'll stop at that line there it's a little awkward here there we'll stop at that line so that's where we're going to stop okay so i'll go ahead and do the other two and then we're ready for our last stage which is routing the slots this hasn't been difficulty it hasn't been difficult outer line center line inside line that whatever is bigger than your tail stock one halfway between and then your lines just tangent if you're doing a small one you probably only want four four stops anyway but being this is quite low i'm putting eight stops so that means eight slots but the second set of slots that are in between the first ones need to stop a little sooner and you can decide on that that amount but that's all there is to it there's very little measuring to do okay i've got all the lines on there and i took a felt pen and just outlined them so you can see them a little better this is where we want to stop here and we'll stop there and of course the long ones are going to be a little bit longer there so and then you want to clamp that into something or put it on a pail because we got the got the thing on there and we want it elevated a little bit but i'm just going to put it in the vise there and then i can tighten it down and i'll have a space in there the only other thing you need and uh is your router now they have circle cutting things that you can put on here i just found this piece of aluminum here and didn't even cut it out and drilled some holes uh screwed it on there and uh then i've laid out uh i guess it would be the distance from the center here to where our hole is there see that hole there is the distance that we when we use the compass to put the arcs on there that will go right through the center there so just a matter of of uh putting hole there now what i did here is i drilled these holes here for a a nail so the nail would fit in there and then the nail fits through that hole as well so when we put that on we'll put our nail in there and uh we'll swing it around there so you know the only measurement that we actually made was just these ones here divide by two that's all there is to it so um i'm gonna put a the router bit in here and you use quarter inch router bit now uh this is a carbide bit uh at least that's what it said when i ordered it and downward spiral i'd almost think an upward spiral will work better but i guess they put downward spirals so when you cut right through your dust is always going underneath i've adjusted it for the thickness of my material here which is just a little bit more than what it's designed to cut but since we're going to cut it cut and we'll cut down so far and then we'll cut it down a little farther down a little farther it it won't matter that it's overextended there when we're cut through the bottom there so i'll get this all set up and then i'll maybe run through one slot with you okay i've got the router on here and uh what i did was just have it set for a small amount to make my first slot there and uh if this had been a pla plexiglas of course you could see through it you could see where your router bit was so i just went uh gradually gradually and back and forth until i got it to the place in here where it's the tangent to your inner circle and then uh come out to the outside circle there and uh then we'll make cuts in between there and there now to make this simple and so it uh uh easy and you don't make a mistake i've first of all made that trial and error you might say and then i've taken a nail and to my outer limit once i had that to the outer limit put the nail in there come over here to the outer limit put a nail there now i can just swing it in between there up and there and it'll stop exactly at the end of my slot so it's kind of a no-brainer you just go ahead and do it okay so um let's just go ahead and cut the slot here we'll turn it on maybe leave it at one side in case there's a thing there so we'll turn this on [Music] [Music] hey [Music] it's just a matter of depending on the type of router you may have a plunge rotor just adjust it down a small amount now making some dust here so we need to clean this out of course you could use compressed air that works good you get a lot of dust in the air should have respirator on which i didn't so far and or a vacuum cleaner just vacuum it out i'm going to try the vacuum cleaner last time i used the compressed air but got quite a bit of dust in the air so i'll clean this out and then we'll get back and finish this slot up okay there's the the first slot done uh outside to tangent and just got seven more to go it works very easily to do that's the one thing nice about mdf it cuts so nice and smooth there i did it in about four or five different sessions there keep dropping the cutter down until like it got all the way through a lot of people use stuff that's a little thinner than this and the bit would fit through quite easily but anyway i'm just going to go ahead and set it up trial by air getting the to the outside edge to where i want to stop and then my two little nails drive in there for uh stops and just back and forth back and forth vacuum it out couldn't be much better i liked the vacuum a lot better than the air it was almost no dust in the air that way okay so i'll just keep plugging away here won't take very long okay got all the holes done once i got started i just three passes and i was through so it actually went very quickly you can't make a mistake got all your holes drilled where they're supposed to be and it's super simple setup i just couldn't believe how actually easy it is to do the setup just your inner circle again your outer circle halfway between and then your pivot points all the way around and since these are shorter or just went halfway between again put another line and that's where those ended there so anyway that's all there is to it rent through check your holes to make sure they're all good yeah and i was ready to undo my screws cut my holes and i thought oh i'm not quite done yet what you have to do is drill a hole in the center here for the pivot so it pivots around one of the sites i looked at said quarter inch the same size as this but that's kind of small i think a little bit bigger would be much better so maybe we'll go 5 16 3 8 or something like that anyway i'll drill that out and then we'll take it apart and put it together we'll be ready to use it well here we are with a basically a finished project project uh i've taken it apart of course and drilled the holes here for the uh so you can put your finger in there to turn it turn it and uh you flip the this is the opposite side now i just you just flip it over so then your spirals are in our crossing now the only thing we have to do now is to oh yeah i put up a dowel in the center here i actually didn't have one the right size so i machined it down so it was a nice snug fit in there so it'll uh spin there well on there now here's uh the uh stoppers that i'm using now there's possibly commercial ones and i don't live near a store or anything so i wasn't able to go look for stuff but these i have a friend that i used to work in the high school for 35 years and uh a friend of mine that working there now stopped by because i'm making that other one that i had i'll give that to him he's got the lathe too so we got these just tried stoppers from uh test tubes and we picked up a few there but uh and i thought well they're pretty stiff you know they're quite stiff rubber but um i found that they're actually they did work well for me so just a matter now of uh putting them through the with the stopper on the out um yeah i'll just mention on the bolts here too get bolts that are flat flat that go flat almost all the way through and then it'll line up you get other bolts you've got threads all the way up but they're loose and then i just took a took it on a done something and tap that through the hole the whole is fair amount smaller but it you can tap to tap it through so and that goes on there through there and then the other side um you get a big washer this is a big washer it's called a fender washer and then the fender washer goes on it gives a nice wide surface there and then oopsie not looking what i'm doing here and lost that and then a wing nut you don't need bolts or nuts that you have to tighten with a wrench just a wing nut is more than adequate so we'll just put a couple in here now what you need to do is make sure you put the the long one through to the long one on the other side when i did the first one i didn't notice it that i actually did a long one with a short one and then when i went to uh take four of them out for a small bowl uh these small slots you use it on small bowls hey this thing's not put together right now what did i do here i got a she i got a short one here with a short one here long one here with a long one here now when you tighten these things up i actually should should put a quarter inch washer at the top here on top of there i think that would work good i didn't didn't have any so i didn't put it in there you can tighten that up with by hand just your hand pressure i'm all of all the way down and the thing squeezes down and expands expands out and that holds your bowl on there a lot stiffer okay so i'll just go ahead and assemble all of these and then show you what it looks like on the lathe and we're all done ready to use just a matter of a few hours and you can have one of these made and works fantastic okay there it is actually it took me about 15 years before i got around to making one of these but i wish i'd done it many years ago it you can finish up your bottom your bowl so much faster than using a plate with a groove in it and pushing it up against and all the other things that you have to do there to do that and i don't have cold jaws and you pretty well need a chuck so maybe there's 150 dollars for the chuck and the jaws and and if you're doing any amount you don't want to keep changing it of course the other setup of course is vacuum chuck which would work good too but that's kind of an expense to set up if you're just doing it for fun so uh yeah it pivots around the center there that's important and uh you can see how those things expand and contract there around your bowl i'll just throw a bowl on here and you'll see how it uh how it goes on there make sure these things aren't too loose when you start just that zipping it back and forth there loosen them up a little bit okay it looks like i got and there we go okay and you just push it up have your laid locked up so you can't turn it lay locked up and then as soon as you get push them up tight then one side then uh one on the other side and it should be held together there we go it's not gonna it doesn't take much in it and it won't move there so usually then what i do is unlock the chuck and just go around and tighten them up you can tighten one instead tighten them all on one side sometimes go to the other side [Music] now what's important on something this size is you've got to have it locked up to the spindle quite a bit some of your lathes have a set screw that you can tighten up so your the when you lay them reverse or sand in reverse it doesn't come off but i found when you start your bottom you're going to have to take some material off and if you don't have the tail stock up against it it will start to vibrate out of course that depends on how how you've done the rim of the bowl now these are quite straight so it's stuck on there so um so i'm just going to bring this tail stock up here because i don't want it to spin off there okay let's see how how this thing turns [Music] just looking at it here where these things are because i went through those uh being quite accurate on uh putting your circles on like drawing the circles right on the lathe when it's spinning you know you're gonna get it perfect from the end i didn't do that when i did the first one i just laid it out and put my face plate on and hope for the best i guess but this one's spinning much much better it's very accurate out here if you notice this here is not as accurate because that was done off of the other the other one that i made but this one here is considerably better than the other one i'd say it's pretty well perfect but just go back through my video and uh do those little tricks that i showed you along the way how to lay out the circles it's so simple it's just inner inner circle outer circle halfway between and that's where you do your you use your compass and they swing your arcs to make these slots here i don't even have five dollars in this thing here because i made the face plate well probably five dollars because i had to buy the nut and a screw and then these bolts i think were yeah probably well less than ten dollars anyway less than ten dollars totally and i've got a fantastic chocolate i can use to do your bold bottom i highly recommend you making one of these it's good to have it hanging on your wall it's a conversation piece or whatever people ask you about what is what it's like what's that used for you can explain it to them and yeah this is just a lot of work to set up cold jaws unless you have an extra chuck anyway uh and it's so that's the longworth chuck completely made super easy to make don't be afraid to make one and you'll be happy for the rest of your life that you did it anyway it's a great accomplishment so thanks for watching and uh every so often i'll have a another video up here with some new ideas or whatever i don't do things specifically just to make videos it's kind of things that i'm working on one of the next things i'm going to do is how to cut threads on wood so i'm working on that right now anyway i'll see you next time

Channel: Brian Procter

Views: 23,352

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Id: K8b7oGajhgc

Length: 42min 12sec (2532 seconds)

Published: Wed Dec 16 2020