Collet Chuck?

[Paul Douglass]

Got out my Woodcraft collet chuck today and Peter is correct. The collets are not the same. I remember I needed sizes it didn't have and could not find any like theirs. The Woodcraft does have several my Beall doesn't have so now I have quite a wide range.

With my beall, I've made wood collets to fit in my 1/2 or 3/4 collets to use on things I wanted a different size for. I also use the wooden ones to hold things I don't want to scratch, like rifle cartridges.

[Marvin Hasenak]

I make mostly predator game calls. I use my collet chucks every on almost every call I make. I have 3 different collet chucks, a Beall, the PSI and a ER40 set that is modified to 2MT to use with a draw bar. For all of the other things I make I could live without it, but would not want to. I have all of my pen mandrels, and between center turning for pens all set up to use the collet chucks, not necessary but I like the way they work.

[Chris Zeigler]

Does anyone know if the PSI collet chuck uses the same collets as the Beall chuck? I believe ER 32, is that right?

Thanks,
Chris

[Gary Chester]

I've been watching this thread as I'm thinking about getting one too. In fact, yesterday I went to woodcraft and bought their collet chuck.

It could very well be me... but I'm not that excited about it. I was looking forward to being able to turn a finial, remove it and then return it to the chuck and have it still turn true... didn't work that well and I was very careful making the tenon accurate... Am I expecting too much?

Do you folks that have the beall chuck have the same problem?

[Dick Mahany]

Like many others, I have limited use for a collet chuck set up. I consider it a Nice to have, but not a Must have. I do use it on special tasks and have th inexpensive Woodcraft edition. I found a very useful adaptation of it for holding a thread cutter for turning lidded box threads. Additional pics here:
http://picasaweb.google.com/dmshopshots

[Derek Stockley]

I made one based on plans from David Reed Smith's website. It works well enough that I've turned a few chess piece sized pieces without the tailstock, and it cost me all of $2 in materials. The only gotcha is you need a tap to cut threads matching your headstock to make the nut.

I found it by googling "all wood collet chuck", here: http://www.davidreedsmith.com/Articl...olletChuck.htm

[Paul Atkins]

Gary, I would expect a collet chuck to be dead center, and that the piece could be mounted several times without any 'runout' or wobble. I use MT2 collets on my wood lathes and ER collets on my machine lathe. All are very well centered.

[Gary Chester]

Thanks Paul, that's what I thought.

FWIW, I found the beall set online yesterday for $135 to my door, but they only carried the 1x8 chuck.