Making a Better Chuck Key for the Lathe

today we're going to fix a problem at the lathe that's been making me look incompetent on camera for as long as i've had a youtube channel welcome back to cloud 42 i'm james well it's been a while since we've done a lathe project here on the channel and that drought ends today i have a problem over at delayed that's been a constant source of annoyance since i got it it's the um the the thing that the hands turn let me just show you this is my four jaw chuck this is a six inch chuck that came with my 10 by 22 lathe and i've got my dual dial indicator holder in here so that i can just come in put the dial indicator on the part and i can dial it in but to actually dial it in uh the ideal way to do this is to you know i'm going to find my high here and i need to tighten this side of the chuck this jaw but if i come in here in line with the indicator which is ideal so i could move it half the distance it needs to go i can't really do that because the chuck key collides with the indicator or my hands collide with the indicator and there's just not room to get in here so what i end up doing is rotating to the top tightening and then coming back down to try to see where i am see that's low that needs to be loosened so i'll loosen that flip it over tighten the other side but since i can't see exactly what i'm doing i can't quickly adjust it because i just can't get in here at the right angle and i'm not the only person with this problem this is quinn dunkey over at blondie hacks and you can see that she's got exactly the same issue human-sized hands just do not fit in the space to manipulate a small chuck key on a lathe like this so what i'm going to do is i'm going to make a larger chuck key the idea is to make a key that's large enough that i can stick it in the front of the chuck in line with the indicator and turn it and it's long enough it has a big enough handle that i can get lots of leverage and i can turn it without my knuckles running into the indicator holder so the body needs to be longer the handle needs to be bigger i want to make it thicker and heavier and just a nicer tool to use and as long as i'm making one and doing all the setups i might as well make two and send one over to quinn so she doesn't have to deal with this anymore either i made some drawings of what we're going to make here and this is the body of the indicator it's three quarters of an inch in diameter but i'm going to make it out of 7 8 inch material because i want the head where the hole goes through to be thicker putting a half inch hole through a 3 4 inch shaft doesn't really leave a lot of material left so we'll go ahead and start with 7 8 material turn it down taper the end put on a square drive put the hole in a set screw and i have some material already cut and ready to go of a 7 8 inch drill rod and this is what we're going to use to make the body and we're going to hold it in the collet chuck not the four jaw because it's much much easier to move it in and out change the setup with collet than it is to constantly be dialing things in in the forge off okay this is w1 tool steel and we're just going to start out by facing the end as is traditional [Applause] then we're going to put a small center hole in the end and i'm going to go with the smallest one that i think i can get away with just because i'm going to leave the center in the end of this in case it needs to be machined or modified later [Applause] i'll replace the drill chuck with the center [Music] and we'll slide this out we're going to have to turn down the first seven inches let's make sure we get a full seven inches exposed here and let's see how that looks this material is 7 8 and i need to turn down the first seven inches of it to three quarters so let's put some blue on here and we'll just go ahead and put a little mark [Applause] and then we will just come and turn up to that point okay zero this and we've got to take 62 and a half of each side so let's start by taking 30 off of each side so this will be a 60 thou total cut and use the auto feed here and probably dial this up i'm going to try taking maybe seven thou per rev it's a pretty aggressive cut but that's sometimes what it takes to get the w1 to uh to actually break a chip but we will see and we'll run this pretty hot and fast and dry [Music] [Music] [Music] so the last thing i want to do is i want to put a little 45 degree chamfer over here and i don't think in this material i'm going to try it with a chamfering tool i think i'm going to do it with the compound so okay i just finished turning the second one to exactly the same dimensions and now we need to flip it around and work on the other end now the reason we turn this so carefully to three quarters of an inch is because we're going to hold the other end in a collet also and for 5c collets it needs to be needs to be pretty exact so out with the 7 8 collet [Music] and in with the three quarters then we're just going to flip this around slide in as far as we can and tighten it down okay and we'll start again by facing off this end there's an and let inch just go ahead and put a little chamfer on the end here that looks even so it's even and just hit it with a little scotch brite here knock off the burrs and i will do the other one exactly the same way okay that's the other one complete now the only thing left to do here on the lathe is to flip it around and turn down the tip now because of the way this is in here we have to actually take the collet all the way out to get it in put the part through from the back just to make sure we have plenty to work with here okay the tip of the first one needs to be 392 thou deep so we will start by marking it [Music] let's try it with the tool anchored [Music] so we should be at 366 here 366 and eight tenths that's plenty okay and now we need to taper this back 12 and a half degrees and this is of course only visual so it doesn't really matter how precise it is but i have my angle blocks here hey what do you know they stayed in place what do i have it's 15 10 here's the two so i'm just going to bring these around and i'm just lining it up visually with the base of the slide here and we'll go just a little bit oh hang on why don't we do it the right direction yeah that looks close enough and let's see if we can put a little uh angle on this thing a little taper so [Music] [Applause] okay i'm getting a lot of ridges in there and that's from me turning the crank so i've got this attachment in my drill and we will try that [Music] [Music] okay that looks pretty good okay the first thing we need to do over here at the mill is put in this hole now this is a half inch diameter hole and i probably want to be about 501 to clear the handle so i'm not just going to drill it i'm going to drill it and then bore it i thought about reaming but because of the curved surface i was a little bit worried that the drill would wander and then the reamer would follow the hole and it would be visible that the amount of meat on the two sides of the hole left in the round shaft would be uh would be uneven and that would be really visible so i decided i'm going to bore that instead so let's get set up and drill this i have the part already set up here in the mill and what i've done is i've just put the body through a 5c collet three quarter inch collet and a 5c collet block and i'll clamp this up in the vise sticking out the end here so i can drill it and then i have a table stop here and i'm butting the end of the part up against that stop so that once i locate and lock down the table i can do both parts without changing the setup so i'm just need to get an edge finder now and find the front and back of the part and the end and locate this hole a half inch in from the end centered on the part decide if this one will work i think it will [Music] okay we'll zero y [Music] okay now we found the front side so i will just hit one half y so that should now put us in exactly the right position and if i come back across and go back to zero and i'll go ahead and lock the y give here now we should be located exactly on the center let me do a little sandy check here yeah that looks right to me so now we just need to do the same thing for x and in this case i can just hit x 0.1 plus or minus enter and so now it's positioned x since i know this is a 200 thou indicator tip i've now positioned it 100 thou off the end so if i bring it in to zero we should be located directly on the edge there we are at the hole needs to be in at 500 okay and let's start out by spotting the hole [Music] okay just looking to make sure that really looks like it's in the right position and it does so let's put a pilot hole through here [Music] [Music] now let's take a bigger hole now i this is going to be half inch but i didn't want to drill it anywhere even close to half inch because i want to bore it out and again i'm worried about this wandering so i grabbed a 27 64 and the reason i grabbed the 27 64 instead of some other more common drill size is because this particular drill is not going to get used much it's just going to sit in the index and so i might as well use it for cases like this where all i need is an undersized hole and go ahead and put the wear on this drill which isn't going to you know wear out over time so might as well use an under utilized size and i will not be surprised at all if somebody writes down in the comments that the 2764 is actually the most used size for some reason that i'm not thinking of right now and that'll be cool too so i'm going to slow this one way down let's run this about 345 this is tool steel it's a relatively large drill and let's see how this goes i do not know what is going on there let's slow it way down there we go we have a broken flute or chip no it feels great why is that groaning and grinding i've got all the gibbs locked everything is locked this machine should be as rigid as can be right now let's try bringing the speed up just a touch [Applause] okay i'll give it some more feed it seems to like that a little better we'll see what happens when it breaks through okay well that looks like a hole drill's hot but it looks it looks perfect to me i see nothing on there see no chipping don't really even see any flute wear don't feel anything with a fingernail i don't know let's get the drill check out of here and come back with the boring head and what we're going to use is a little criterion high speed steel boring bar let's just see if we can take a clean up pass and see what that looks like start at about 600 rpm and see what that's like [Music] so let's just take another tin just to try to get a feel for this and make sure it's doing what we want and i think i'm going to go ahead and use the power down feed and make another pass here [Music] about 502 and a half you grab a scrap of the handle material and let's see how the fit is that is going to be just fine there's a burr on the bottom let me uh swap around and do the other one and then we'll get ready to mill the other end okay i've got this flipped around and mounted back in the chuck with the soon to be square end pointed out and i've got a quarter inch end mill in here this is just a carbide four flute end mill and all we need to do is come in and mill off four sides flat now the normal way to do this traditionally would be to come down from the top and mill off the top side but i would that leaves a square shoulder and i don't want a square shoulder on the part i would like to have a rounded shoulder so i'm going to side mill in from this side we're going to do a conventional cut just because this mill doesn't have ball screws it has lead screws and i don't want it to grab and shatter the end mill and we're going to take this nice and easy and bring it in and make the cuts rotate the collet block and see where we end up and then we'll take the rest of the material on a second set of passes [Laughter] that's one now let me rotate the collet block 90 degrees and do the next one [Laughter] so and we're at 3 13. that will do let me just grab the other one and go ahead and mill it off as well and then do a little bit of deburring and i will meet you over at the lathe okay the last operation is going to be to drill and tap a hole in the end of this for a set screw to hold the handle in place and we will do that here at the lathe start with a spotting drill [Applause] then the tap drill for 832 just because when i went through my drawer looking for quarter inch set screws 832 were the only ones that i had [Applause] handy [Applause] and we'll unlock the tail stock and run nice and slow and let the 832 tap just pull itself in and push itself back out then we'll do a light countersink there just to make sure the end is nice and clean i'll just make sure the holes clear push the burr out and then let's put in the handle and then we will put in a set screw another nice little bite and this should be the last time we have to use this dumb little handle and there we have it as long as we've got it all assembled and ready to go let's give it a try i've got another one in here of course this is the one for quinn so i need to do this to get it centered up so i can drill and tap it and let's just do exactly the same process i'm gonna i'm used to backing it up and doing this my muscle memory is all wrong so let's give it a try and see if we can make it work okay so there's a low i will back that off a little bring it around to the high and it's in line with the indicator so i can just bring it back down and i can see that wasn't far enough so take a little bit more and let's go ahead and work on this neck other on the other two jaws okay that's the low back that off that's the high bring it down and actually we're really close already that is nice being able to dial it in with the jaw so dilating line with the indicator so back that off a little bit bring it around to the high and take out about half of that error just like that and we are just about there oh this is nice i'm really happy with the way these turned out uh the the finish that i can get on w1 tool steel even with my modest tools is just gorgeous and to actually get the chips to break you have to push it pretty hard i was running this at a thousand rpm and running seventh hour per revolution feed rate to get the chips to break and they come off hot and they fly but um you can take a finer cut for the finish passes which is what i did but then it ends up kind of spiraling up and creating a rat's nest but you can come back with a little 400 grit emery and some scotch brite which is what i did here and just raised a beautiful finish the handle is just a half inch w1 drill rod also and i didn't show doing this on camera but i just chamfered the ends using the compound the same way i did the chamfers here and then rounded it over with a file in the lathe and hit it with a little emery and scotch brite to brighten it up you can see how the square drive turned out here i'm real happy with how clean that is i did come back with a hand file and chamfered the edges just to soften it and to make it fit a little bit better in the chuck but all in all this just turned out beautiful and here's the second one that i made for quinn to fit her five inch four jaw chuck and the only difference is that the square drive on this end is a little bit smaller because the drive dimensions are different on the key for her chuck so this should fit if she sent me the right directions or sent me the right dimensions and if i cut them correctly which i'll bet we probably both did so i suspect this will work great got a handle for that and a screw and i will get those packed up and sent off to her the other thing i did is i 3d printed a chuck key holder this goes on the backsplash of my lathe and just holds the chuck key when i'm not using it so i don't leave it in the chuck of course this thing's so big and heavy it's unlikely i'll leave it in the chuck but it's nice to have a place to just toss it and the ones that i had were not big enough for this so i'll uh check with queen on the dimensions of her lathe and print one of these up to send over to her as well and i think that is going to do it for today if you enjoyed this video give it a thumbs up feel free to subscribe to the channel and leave me a comment i'd like to know what you think thank you for watching [Music] you

Channel: Clough42

Views: 71,509

Rating: 4.9411354 out of 5

Keywords: Lathe, Chuck Key, 4-Jaw, Machining, Machine Shop, Tool Steel, W1, Turning, Milling, Collet Block, Boring Head

Id: Z-1g9PJTrzc

Length: 32min 43sec (1963 seconds)

Published: Sat Apr 03 2021