Raffan's vacuum cleaner chuck?

[Michael Kellough]

Reading a Raffan book and there are photos of his vacuum chuck that is connected to his shop vaccum rather than a pump. There is a vacuum cleaner hose hanging from a short section of pvc pipe between the headstock and the work.

Does anyone have construction details for this kind of chuck (high volume rather than high vac pressure)? Somewhere I read that this (high volume system) would be good for leaky wood that a pump could not hold.

[Timothy Mann]

I believe that a member here, Bob Hamilton(sp?) has a youtube video about his shop vac system. I have watched it several times and am considering doing that myself. Just do a search for his name on youtube bob hamilton woodturner and it will bring up his vids.

[Tony Wheeler]

check with Bob Hamilton he used to use a shop vac for vaccum chucking he might even have a veido on it excuse my spelling

[Nate Davey]

I used a shop vac vacuum pump and loved it. Simple, cheap. Just ensure to drill a 1/4" bleeder hole in the plug for the shop vac hose

[Hayes Rutherford]

Michael, Vicmarc makes a vacuum faceplate that you supply the vacuum for. If I'm not mistaken, you can mount it in your chuck jaws and the vacuum hooks up on the chuck side as opposed to the handwheel side.

[Josh Bowman]

Try this link to the Bob Hamilton Vacuum Cleaner Chuck

[art pfenn]

Here is another one

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qm5GTFUQsy4

[Bob Hamilton]

I use a shop vac for my vacuum source but I draw the vacuum through the headstock spindle from the outboard side. The only reason I can think of to draw the vacuum on the inboard side would be if your headstock spindle was solid and did not have a through hole. I know there are specialized rotary adaptors that allow doing that but I know nothing about them.

The rotary adaptor is critical to any vacuum system no matter what source is used for the vacuum. I had an incident just before Christmas where the bearing on my rotary adaptor seized which caused the hose to try spinning with the spindle. As you can imagine, that didn't work too well and the hose yanked itself out of the fitting on the outboard hand wheel. The bowl I was working on wobbled a few times and then jammed between the chuck and the tool rest before exploding into several large piece that flew all over. I was very fortunate to escape without injury, especially since I had forgotten to swing my face shield down. The incident was captured on video and I posted it here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3mFl3dxV6xM

I have had good luck with using my shop vac as a source for the work I do. The source of the vacuum was irrelevant to this particular incident since it was the rotary adaptor that failed. Proper maintenance of the adaptor on my part would have avoided the problem.

Take care
Bob