Shop made jaws

[Greg Keddy]

I'm interested to hear if anyone has good or bad experience with shop made wooden or PVC jaws. I saw a magazine article that shows a jig for them, and the customization and cost factor are certainly appealing. Though not mentioned in the article, I imagine wood selection to be an important part of these jaws not exploding in ones face.

Thoughts?

 

[hockenbery]

What do you plan to use them for?

I have the flat plates for the oneway strong hold.
I used them quite a bit but it was more than 9 years ago years to hold odd shapes, some box parts, balls etc.
I never used them on anything that weighed more than a few pounds.

I used soft maple screwed onto the jaw plates then turned the profile on the wood while on the chuck.
I used the soft maple because I had a lot of it, it was generally softer than wood I would hold and not make marks,
It is fairly strong and not prone to split.

I used a few expansion holds and some compression holds.
They worked great. I found them most useful for runs of items since there is always 30-90 minutes to think, cut, mount, and shape the jaws
I made a bunch of bracelets using the Wooden jaws which were great for holding them inside and outside for finishing cuts and sanding.
The wooden jaws worked well because I was making a variety of sizes.

I also made some up to hold squares for making molding corner blocks. These were square or rectangular blanks i turned concentric beads on.

Al

 

[Mark Mandell]

Greg,

I've made special jaws from HDPE, UHMW, or Nylon, but I'd stay away from PVC as it's much more brittle. I seem to remember that there was a how-to article in the Journal some years back. Might be well to run a search on the AAW on-line Journal site if, of course, you're an AAW member.

 

[Greg Keddy]

Al: I'm planning to turn chess pieces and scoops with them, to start. I think I have some soft maple kicking around so I'll have to give it a shot

Mark: unfortunately not an AAW member, but the article that I do have give a pretty good explanation. I'll likely stick with wood jaws over any sort of plastic

 

[Odie]

Greg.......another option for small pieces is a collet chuck.

This probably wouldn't work for your purposes, but thought I'd show you some homemade wooden jaws for the stronghold chuck. These fit over the small tower jaws and have a rubber non-marring face to them. The base is 1/4" plywood and the uprights are birch dowel. They are for the expand mode only, and are used for very tiny openings.

I'm always very interested in seeing what others have done by building their own jigs and fixtures. Go for it, and be sure to show us what you came up with......:cool2:

ooc

 

[Joe Greiner]

PVC is OK

Here's a multi-finger chuck made from a pvc pipe couping. Dimensions limited to available sizes; this is 4.5" ID, for 4" pipe.

Mount a wood block to a faceplate. Turn it to mate with the pipe coupling (tapered), by smearing felt-tip ink on the coupling, and rubbing on the (STOPPED!) wood. Cut and sand away the transferred ink, as many times as needed. Attach the coupling with wood screws.

Cut (by scraping) the other tapered end of the coupling to cyclindrical.

Cut a groove on the outside for the pipe clamp, then cut slots to allow flexing.

To perch the workpiece at a proper distance, place a loose wood block, or other shims, inside.

The fingers may mark the workpiece; shield with masking tape.

 

[John Lawson]

Al: I'm planning to turn chess pieces and scoops with them, to start. I think I have some soft maple kicking around so I'll have to give it a shot

Mark: unfortunately not an AAW member, but the article that I do have give a pretty good explanation. I'll likely stick with wood jaws over any sort of plastic

I have turned chesspieces, and held them four ways. The ones I intended to weight, I drilled a 3/8" hole in the bottom and held them either with a threaded bottle-stopper mandrel (careful drilling is required, and a catch will cause the threads to strip out) or with a 3/8" spur center driven in the hole (turns well, but sometimes hard to get off). The way I held pieces I did not intend to weight used the pin jaws on my chuck. I made a PVC collet to hold the workpiece (which was already round), or I held the workpiece directly in the pin jaws, but with a trued up spacer so I only was gripping about 1/2", and just parted off close to the jaws. I was turning rather close to the chuck that way, but I had set myself a challenge to make the set from two 36" dowels.

http://www.aawforum.org/photopost/showphoto.php?photo=11835&ppuser=17298

http://www.aawforum.org/photopost/showphoto.php?photo=10321&ppuser=17298

 

[Odie]

Here's a multi-finger chuck made from a pvc pipe couping. Dimensions limited to available sizes; this is 4.5" ID, for 4" pipe.

Mount a wood block to a faceplate. Turn it to mate with the pipe coupling (tapered), by smearing felt-tip ink on the coupling, and rubbing on the (STOPPED!) wood. Cut and sand away the transferred ink, as many times as needed. Attach the coupling with wood screws.

Cut (by scraping) the other tapered end of the coupling to cyclindrical.

Cut a groove on the outside for the pipe clamp, then cut slots to allow flexing.

To perch the workpiece at a proper distance, place a loose wood block, or other shims, inside.

The fingers may mark the workpiece; shield with masking tape.

Interesting concept, Joe.

Don't think I've ever seen one like that before.......will file this information away, for possible use.....

thanks

ooc

 

[John Teichert]

I'm interested to hear if anyone has good or bad experience with shop made wooden or PVC jaws. I saw a magazine article that shows a jig for them, and the customization and cost factor are certainly appealing. Though not mentioned in the article, I imagine wood selection to be an important part of these jaws not exploding in ones face.

Thoughts?

I saw that same article in a recent Woodturning Design, thought it well written, and had multiple types of jaws. I haven't made jaws that attach directly to the chuck, but have attached them to my mini cole jaws. I think that speed of the lathe and selection of wood are an important part of them not "exploding".

BTW, the second section of that article by David Reed Smith was Prudence, in which he offered up guidelines for selecting (or not selecting) materials, and generally avoided the use of sheet goods including MDF, and was mostly in favor of "Maple, or some other fine-grained hardwood". The PVC mentioned in the article did not refer to big box plumbing supplies, but solid PVC bought through industrial suppliers.

In the article David discusses in that same section, the need to be "well prudent" in the selection of speed and safety equipment

Cheers, JT

 

[MichaelMouse]

The PVC chuck is the direct descendant of a commonly used maple ancestor. I made and used a soft maple type years back. Be careful of that hose clamp ribbon and adjuster. Taping them over limits careless contact to a bump rather than a cut.

On the original topic, I made and used auxiliary wooden jaws on the old Masterchuck, which came with a set of plates designated for the task. They were of maple or cherry, no hard annual rings to split, and were of dovetail configuration for bowls and platters, with a square opening for Shaker pegs, and so forth. Don't overspeed, as the man says, and don't push the gouge to the wood, let the wood come to the gouge.

 

[dickhob]

I've found using plastic kitchen cutting boards excellent for making chucks for small pieces. They are easy to cut and soft so they don't mess up your work. You've only got about 3/8" thickness to work with but I've been able to make jaws for both expansion and compressing for things like lidded boxes, small bowls, sweater buttons etc. I can usually get at least 1/4" for holding the work.

I cut a tenon or a grove to place over the chuck jaws for either expansion or contraction. I drill a hole in the center and bandsaw a line from the rim to the center hole. It gives me about 1/16 to expand/contract the jaw. I'm sure there is some distortion, but for all practical purposes, it is not noticeable.
Dick

 

[Greg Keddy]

Thanks all for the comments and input.

I like the cutting board idea, maybe i can find an extra thick one

I'll post whatever I come up with, when I get my shop up and going again. On a temporary hiatus whilst I install a cyclone