I have a nice beefy chuck but it lacks a drawbar so it is always a bit nerve-wracking to turn anything with it since, no matter how firmly seated it is to begin with, it eventually tries to back out with vibration. The chuck has just a 'tab' at the end now. Have any of you managed to add a bar to something without one? How?
My first though is to drill a pilot hole through the end of the tab which has a centered (?) indent left by the original manufacturing process with the chuck/morse sitting vertical in my drill press and then to enlarge the hole to the proper size to tap it to accept 1/4-20 or 3/8-16 rod of sufficient length to go through my headstock. Or should I just bite the bullet and try to find a machinist who is willing to work cheap?
The tang at the ends sounds to have a centre drill hole which is common. Used to engage with a live/dead centre on the tailstock while machining.
The big unknown is whether the MT taper is hardened. Try a file on the tang. If the file skips over the surface without leaving a mark, it is hardened. If the file digs in as normal and removes some metal it is not hardened.
If it is not hardened I may be able to machine it for you. Send me a email with the overall dimensions of the chuck so I can determine if I can mount this on my metal lathe.
Thanks for everyone's input. I'll go back to the shop and do some studying to see if the MT seems to be removable and what the other taper might be. I'd much prefer to simply swap if that is possible. At my age a bit of cash is always preferable to a lot of labor.
Jacobs chucks aren't the best tool to hold anything to turn. The jaws are rounded and crush the fibers so whatever you turn can easily come out. Then of course you also run into the problem you have which is the Morse taper coming loose. It is much better to invest in a set of small jaws or the Beal Collet system to hold smaller items. They are much less likely to work loose and of course they holder won't come out.
The other comments are excellent. Either saw off the tang and then drill and tap which is usually quite easy, or simply drill the tang. The bolt doesn't have to be 1/4" you could use 3/16" if necessary. My experience has been that Morse tapers are usually case hardened on the taper surface and quite easy to drill into the end.
Just this weekend I bought a chuck with the 2MT drilled and tapped for a drawbar. I got it from VM Woodworking. You might give them a call and see if they have a suitable arbor already made. The arbor should be removable from the chuck.
I don't use the chuck to grasp what I'm turning. What I do is to chuck up a 1/4-20 screw into the chuck and that, in turn, goes into a threaded brass insert screwed/epoxied into the base of a small exotic blank. I know that there are other ways to do this and I could, with a bit of retraining, learn to use a my Nova screw chuck insert for this sort of work but that would not be easy and would limit access to the 'bottom' of the work which is unobstructed with my present system.
BTW, what I've been doing lately to practice and get back into groove of turning is making hyper-powerful refrigerator magnets in a variety of forms with various embellishments -- tagua nut in desert ironwood for example -- since I never throw anything away and have a real trove of small exotic cutoffs dating back into the 80s. The magnet portion is provided by a 3/4" rare-earth magnet in a steel cup inset in a 7/8" hole in the bottom and with a friction pad covering it. They are able to hold up quite a sheaf of papers.
Gotcha. I do that also. The chuck holds small metal pieces quite well (duh that's what it's designed to do). Try drilling the tang. If that doesn't work then you can buy a wedge to knock the old morse taper out and install a new one.
I just came up from the shop and I at least won't need to buy wedges. There is a through hole inside the chuck and I drove the #2 MT to 33JT thingy out with a drift pin. Now I'm in the process of looking for a proper threaded MT adapter to fit.
Later...
I ordered the #2 MT to 33 JT adapter from LittleMachineShop.com a little while ago. Not as cheap as I would have hoped once shipping is included but way less work and virtually no chance for screwups so I'm happy. Thanks to whoever recommended this vendor originally.
>Has anybody here had good experience with this shop?
I've ordered many things from them including machines. Experience is good. They immediately took care of the very few small issues I had. Always helpful on the phone too, when I had technical questions.
John McGaw: I think that's what most folks do with a lathe mounted Jacobs chuck, that, and drilling holes. And there's nothing wrong with hold a small piece of wood for some light turning.
BTW, nice magnets, how do you go about making those with the sawtoothed crown like tops?
I am curious about your brass inserts in the exotics. Do you leave the brass insert attached-- is it part of the finished turning?
Oh, now I want to make some, but for my shop doors! My Lovely Bride chose stainless steel appliances when we rebuilt the kitchen. That might be blatant discrimination against the creative development of grandchildren! Maybe I should add some steel paneling on one wall...
I can imagine this would be a good project for kids. I may shamelessly steal your idea but simplify the screw chuck and magnet method. My first thought is make a simple screw chuck from wood with a long nose that fits snugly into the mortise for the magnet and still allows access to the bottom of the piece, then glue just a magnet directly into the hole. I like your idea of a pad on the bottom - kind of back to the days of felt-bottomed bowls, eh? :-)
BTW, I think the Ruth Niles bottle stopper mandrel would be good for this - the diameter is just over 3/4" and it has a self-tapping screw - just have to drill two holes, one for the magnet and one for the screw. It fits into the morse taper. The newer versions are threaded for a draw bar.
This is the one I have. I may chuck it up in the metal lathe and cut a groove to allow close work on the base without reversing. It should be pretty easy to make one from scratch from a piece of hard wood, morse taper and all.
Yes, the brass insert stays in place underneath the 7/8" steel cup which retains the magnet. With hard dense exotics it is necessary to reduce the threads on the insert by spinning it on the lathe and applying a flat file until the diameter is a good fit into a 10mm hole. There is no way that I've found to screw an insert into the 'good' woods but a tight push fit and epoxy takes care of that.
The grooving is the result of an old jig from my early turning days in Alaska which I just re-created. Basically it just holds a roto-tool horizonally on a fixed table which is locked to the bed. The front of the jig follows a 'fence' clamped to the table. In it's present form it is useful for only straight lines. A lot of variation is possible with changes of tool, depth of cut, angle of fence, and angle of face being cut. The indexing head on the lathe takes care of the positioning of the radial cuts.
You'll want the most secure fit you can get on the workpiece unless you can find some way to turn entirely between centers. You will probably find that magnets stick just fine to most stainless appliances -- the alloy they use is normally magnetic (at least all of the stainless in my kitchen is).
As for the magnets, I'd suggest that you go with the cups and friction material from Lee Valley. The cups really concentrate the force and the friction disks are necessary to prevent slippage and possible damage. The ones I make with 3/4" magnets in cups are really strong -- my elderly mother really can't get one off the fridge unless it is one that I've made for better grip; she simply can't get enough hold on the smooth gabon ebony cylinder to pull it off. BTW: I use the 1" disks on the 7/8" cups; the bodies usually wind up around 1-1/8" so everything is well covered.
Method: I drill the big hole for the cup to just deeper than needed and then drill the hole for the brass insert inside that. I enlarge the mounting hole in the cup so that the mandrel bolt can clear. Both pieces are epoxied in place at the same time and when the glue sets I usually need to run a tap into the insert to clean it up. Having the cup glued in place gives me a good surface for my impromptu mandrel to sit against and a guide for turning the bottom.
I've made some previously with small magnets using up scrap pen blank stock but they aren't nearly as satisfying as the bigg'ns.
This thread got me thinking and fiddling around in the shop.
I came up with an inexpensive way to remove the 33 taper from the chuck. The collar diameter between the #33 and the #2 Morse is about 9/16". I took two 5/8" i.d plain steel washers and made two parallel cuts to make a 5/8" slot in each. Then I ground a rough taper at each slot, placed the washers opposing each other over the collar, and squeezed them together in a vise and the 33 taper easily slipped out of the chuck body.
I'm going to try making some, probably much smaller and not so strong - I want small kids to be able to use them easily. A 1/4" cylinder or 1/2" disk magnet might be strong enough to hold some construction paper artwork.
