
Hi all,
The other night I was in the garage ... was not doing any model engineering, can't remember what it was but I ended up messing with the lathe.
The 3 jaw chuck I have is well past it's sell by date so I got a new one from Axminster (I had one for my previous lathe and it was fine for me). Problem is, the current chuck is so tight on the spindle nose I can't budge it.
I had a daft idea that wedging a screw driver between two of the change wheels would lock it sufficiently to undo the chuck, however, I've just mashed one of the gears up!

sometimes I'm so stupid I can't believe it.
The gear is made of some sort of leathery substance, and bolted to a hub. It must be done incase you overload it or something. I thought usually it just had dowels that snap if it's overloaded on the feed shafts. Anyway, my lathe pretty basic now without any screwcutting, feeds or power cross feed!
I need to get another gear made up the same or find a source of gears for harrison L5 lathes. Even more importantly, I still need to get the chuck off! does anyone have any ideas , I've tried putting a spanner on one of the nuts that hold the other gears in place so it was pushing the spanner against the bit of spindle that sticks out of the rear of the headstock however, all this succeeded in doing was tightening the nut too much. I don't want to bend anything either. I'm struggling to think of a way without damaging anything, it's so tight.
Bit of a nightmare this!
Cheers,
Nick