Author Topic: ♪♫ Happy Easter to Me! ♫♪ - new chuck  (Read 2448 times)

Offline AdeV

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♪♫ Happy Easter to Me! ♫♪ - new chuck
« on: April 23, 2020, 10:13:50 AM »
All of my chucks are, like the lathe (and me!) old and worn out.... so it's time to buy a shiny new one....

Having watched yet another of Adam Booth's (Abom77) videos, where he once again raved about his 6-jaw chuck, I figured - yep, I want a 6-jaw! The Edgwick, being of a decent size, will easily carry a 10-12" chuck. My bank account, on the other hand, wheezingly and begrudgingly only coughed up enough to buy a Chinese 10"... And today, after a week in quarantine in Shanghai, it's arrived!

Behold, the magnificence...

01 - Das Box
02 - Silly spring-loaded chuck key. "Un"fortunately, the spring fell off as I was cleaning off the transport oil. For shame. No external jaws for these chucks, unfortunately.
03 - Tada!

So, first impressions out of the box: By heck it's stiff! Obviously designed to wear in with use, although a total absence of grease (just some thin oil) probably isn't helping much. On the bright side, there seems to be almost no side wobble in the jaws (unlike reviews of the 100mm version of the same chuck I've seen on 'tube), just a tiny amount of back-and-forth play, which is plenty acceptable. Of course, the thing about having no side wobble is... they're a tight fit! Hopefully some grease will ease things up a touch.
« Last Edit: April 23, 2020, 10:42:21 AM by AdeV »
Cheers!
Ade.
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Location: Wallasey, Merseyside. A long way from anywhere.
Occasionally: Zhengzhou, China. An even longer way from anywhere...

Offline Brass_Machine

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Re: ♪♫ Happy Easter to Me! ♫♪ - new chuck
« Reply #1 on: April 23, 2020, 10:16:19 AM »
That's nice!
Science is fun.

We're all mad here. I'm mad. You're mad.

Offline AdeV

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Re: ♪♫ Happy Easter to Me! ♫♪ - new chuck
« Reply #2 on: April 23, 2020, 10:32:42 AM »
So, in the best traditions of buying a Chinese chuck, the first job is to disassemble it!  :ddb:

I looked for jaw numbers, but couldn't see any... however, when jaw no. 6 popped out, it was clearly stamped inside the "T" slot section. The number was also stamped on the chuck body, in the base of the slot where the jaw rides. Not terribly visible, but plenty good enough for assembly/disassembly purposes.

Having extricated the jaws (04), "flip" the chuck over (cue much "old man grunting") and remove the backplate (05). It all looks OK in there; the teeth on the pinions seem to be nicely rounded, and there's minimal burring on the scroll plate teeth. Definitely no grease though.

Removing the scroll was "challenging" - I ended up needing a piece of sacrificial aluminium bar & a hammer to tap it free. Anyway, it's now in its component parts (06). The scroll looks OK, not too much of a burr on the edges (07). I'll give the corners a wipe over with a stone anyway, just to see if I can smooth them off at all. Inside the body (08) there's a fair bit of dirt, and the oil feels a little gritty, so I'll give all that a good clean up; re-assemble with some grease inside, and then I need to make a backplate!

Fortunately, being pre-warned by my credit card that there was an expensive chuck on the way, I snagged a piece of cast iron from our local metal merchant (who, surprisingly, is still open for business). Unfortunately I mis-heard him, and what I thought would be a most acceptable 90mm piece of 290mm CI, turned out to be 19mm!!! 3/4". Barely enough for a backplate, really... but it's what I've got, so it'll have to do.

09 - just enough cast iron
10 - If I use my Mircona face grooving tools, I should be left with a CI ring  :ddb: I wonder if it'll be big enough to help rebuild Andrew's manhole cover?  :lol:
« Last Edit: April 23, 2020, 02:10:38 PM by AdeV »
Cheers!
Ade.
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Location: Wallasey, Merseyside. A long way from anywhere.
Occasionally: Zhengzhou, China. An even longer way from anywhere...

Offline AdeV

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Re: ♪♫ Happy Easter to Me! ♫♪ - new chuck
« Reply #3 on: April 23, 2020, 10:40:16 AM »
Thanks Eric! I was a bit concerned the quality would be iffy - having watched a couple of videos on YT of similar San Ou chucks - but it would seem that the bigger ones (if mine is representative) are better made... at least, I hope so. I'm hoping I don't have to grind the jaws true, like one person did.

I found mine on Alibaba for the ridiculously cheap price of US$136 (about UK£110). Postage more than doubled that, adding US$166.63 (£134.35), for a total price of $302.63 (£244.35). I may yet end up with VAT and import duty to pay (Fedex, uniquely as far as I know, deliver first & demand the tax later), which will add another ~20% to that price. However, I can reclaim that, so I tend not to include it in my thinking.

Cheers!
Ade.
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Location: Wallasey, Merseyside. A long way from anywhere.
Occasionally: Zhengzhou, China. An even longer way from anywhere...

Offline Brass_Machine

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Re: ♪♫ Happy Easter to Me! ♫♪ - new chuck
« Reply #4 on: April 23, 2020, 11:46:51 AM »
From the pictures, it looks to be decent quality... Not sure about the tolerances? Can't measure on the screen... lol.

But, it looks better than some of the Chinese chucks I have had... Insides looked like they were made with playdoh!
Science is fun.

We're all mad here. I'm mad. You're mad.

Offline awemawson

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Re: ♪♫ Happy Easter to Me! ♫♪ - new chuck
« Reply #5 on: April 23, 2020, 12:13:01 PM »
Andrew's manhole   :lol:

Gerroff  :clap: :clap: :clap:

(nice Chuck Ade  :thumbup:)
Andrew Mawson
East Sussex

Offline AdeV

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Re: ♪♫ Happy Easter to Me! ♫♪ - new chuck
« Reply #6 on: April 23, 2020, 02:33:17 PM »
So... once the paying work was done for the day, back out to the shop to clean up the chuck. Using alcohol, a rag, and a screwdriver to help get into the corners, I removed all the obvious dirt and grit. Once it passed the "thumb test" (fingers/thumbs are great for feeling out grittiness), I got on with stoning the corners of the scroll. There were a few lumps, bumps and sharp edges. Half an hour later, and it was nice and smooth feeling all the way around both edges. I've no idea if the faces are any good... just have to hope there. Again, liberal quantities of 99.9% IPA (Greene King's finest) was applied to a rag & shoved around the scroll using a screwdriver. Once "clean enough", re-assembly could commence.

First.... a note on fit & finish. For the most part, it seems excellent. The scroll is a really snug fit on the bore, the backplate (just cheap aluminium) is near enough. But weirdly... one of the pinions is an odd-man out. See if you can spot why in photo 11....  :lol: Not too big a problem, fortunately, there's still enough meat on the end that it rides OK in its supporting hole. If it ever causes an issue in the future, I reckon I can fix it with a bit of welding & turning.

So - photo 12: Apply enough grease to get a high-speed weasel up a drain pipe... I also greased the pins that locate the pinions. At this point, the chuck turns easily and smoothly with just one finger on the chuck key... Re-attach the back plate, and flip over. Weirdly, that made it a little harder to turn, I'm not sure why exactly

Moving onto the jaws, I noticed that 5 of the 6 had a nasty little burr on one corner of the "T-slot". Jaw #1 didn't - I wonder if that's the "quality control" jaw, and whoever was on deburring duty that day was feeling a little, shall we say, work shy...?  :scratch:

Anyway, my concern was that they'd be trying to scrape away at one of the running faces, and being right on a corner & fairly prominent, I wasn't sure how long they'd take to stone out (or even if I'd damage my stone)... so on the off-chance, I had at it with a file. To my surprise, it worked.... so obviously the jaws aren't as hard as they could be... There was also a sharp edge on the bottom of each jaw, the part that sticks out in front of the scroll. I filed those a bit too; they wouldn't be an issue in use, but it's one less place to cut a finger.

Photo 13: All back together again. It's still stiff to turn, but nothing like as much as it was out of the box. It feels a bit smoother too (not that it felt bad out of the box). I did notice, per one of the YouTube videos, that if you clamp it up just using one pinion, then one of the jaws doesn't quite tighten - you have to go around and tweak up each pinion in turn to get it fully tight. This is not a problem, I already have to do that on my 3-jaw to get anywhere close to concentric with it, so I'm already in the habit of tweaking each 'ole.

All in all - so far, I'm a happy (Easter) bunny. So for my next trick.... I'll turn up a "go-nogo" gauge plug for the Edgwick spindle nose (more like a "go" gauge, I can't be bothered having a "no go" as well..), I can then use that when cutting the lathe-facing side of the backplate, rather than having to constantly take it off the lathe & back on again to test fit. Watch this space (but don't hold your breath.... first baby is just a couple of weeks away, if he's on time, which will put a serious dent into workshop time).  I need to get back to restoring that Boxford, so I've got something to play with while I'm stuck at home!
Cheers!
Ade.
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Location: Wallasey, Merseyside. A long way from anywhere.
Occasionally: Zhengzhou, China. An even longer way from anywhere...

Offline awemawson

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Re: ♪♫ Happy Easter to Me! ♫♪ - new chuck
« Reply #7 on: April 23, 2020, 02:52:19 PM »
And the Hozelock fitting was used for . . . . .  what exactly  :scratch:
Andrew Mawson
East Sussex

Offline AdeV

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Re: ♪♫ Happy Easter to Me! ♫♪ - new chuck
« Reply #8 on: April 23, 2020, 03:06:39 PM »
And the Hozelock fitting was used for . . . . .  what exactly  :scratch:

 :lol:

I'm going to claim it was there for scale purposes.... but actually it's just hanging about for reasons unknown. It's got a mister on the other end, from a time some years back when an "acquaintance" of mine was experimenting with "medicinal" plants...
Cheers!
Ade.
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Location: Wallasey, Merseyside. A long way from anywhere.
Occasionally: Zhengzhou, China. An even longer way from anywhere...