New Lathe Update and Chuck Questions

[Bob Winkler]

Wow, the learning curve on the woodturning hobby is quite steep for me. After getting the Jet MINI, I read several books including Richard Raffan's, watched his video, and read lots of forum posts.

Seems I have a lot more to learn. I bought some Crown HSS tools, but I think I need more practice to get them really sharp. I did practice spindle turning on a 2x4 last night, and it went quite well.

It looks like a need a screw chuck and 4 jaw chuck to do much bowl turning. From what I can tell, the Nova MIDI chuck comes with a screw as well. Is this a decent chuck for me? It's on sale a Woodcraft for $100. I don't want to spend money for something I don't need, or something that could be replaced by something better for a little more $$$. Hope that makes sense.

Thanks for any advice. This round work is making me feel really stupid!

Bob

[Charles Bjorgen]

Congratulations on your new Jet mini. It's a fine lathe for the money. Even if you later choose to buy a larger capacity machine, chances are you'll want to keep the little Jet. Our local turning club now owns seven of these machines that are used for our club small group sessions.

You'll get lots of advice that a chuck is not necessary and that's true. Yet, it was one of the first accessories, after cutting tools, I bought and I was never sorry. My first chuck was the Oneway Talon and I can certainly recommend that chuck for your lathe. I also recently bought the new Nova Midi chuck to use on my Mercury mini lathe. The current $100 price at Woodcraft makes this a very nice buy. I don't believe the Nova Midi is as robust in terms of holding power as the Talon (or Vicmarc or other comparably priced chucks) but it certainly should work well for a starter. You can download the manual for this chuck from the Teknatool web site here:

http://www.teknatool.com/products/Ch...Midi_Chuck.htm

Look to the column on the left side of the page.

Some people don't care for having to use Tommy bars rather than a key to tighten this chuck. For the size work I do with this chuck, it hasn't been a problem for me. The Midi now uses several of the jaw sets that are availble for the standard Nova and Super Nova chucks. I just bought the 25mm jaws for this chuck yesterday at the Woodcraft sale.

There was a previous small chuck by Nova called the Compac, which has been discontinued because of poor performance. I tried one and returned it. The new Midi seems considerably improved. If you buy this chuck, pay attention to the instructions for cleaning and assembly of jaws.

By all means, learn to sharpen your tools. Hope this helps.