Four jaw chuck ..A Strange Elusive Animal

[Michael Mills]

Someone knows…
Does a four-jaw drill chuck exist? And at a modest price like three jaw chucks.
I want to install the chuck to a handle for light woodturning and be able to change custom bits. The four jaws would be for square stock (up to ½ inch) for small scrapers, bedans, etc.
I have performed searches at google and came up with nothing. The closest I found was a ½ inch capacity T-handle tap wrench but the jaws do not look sufficient for stress, and also appear to be tapered.
Any wild ideas?
Thanks,
Mike

[Rod Sheridan]

Michael, if I understand correctly, you want to use the chuck to hold small gouges for wood turning?

Why not simply use a metal handle with suitable bore and a set screw to hold the tool?

Regards, Rod.

[Scott T Smith]

Someone knows…
Does a four-jaw drill chuck exist? And at a modest price like three jaw chucks.
I want to install the chuck to a handle for light woodturning and be able to change custom bits. The four jaws would be for square stock (up to ½ inch) for small scrapers, bedans, etc.
I have performed searches at google and came up with nothing. The closest I found was a ½ inch capacity T-handle tap wrench but the jaws do not look sufficient for stress, and also appear to be tapered.
Any wild ideas?
Thanks,
Mike


Mike, yes they exist, and were commonly used on metal lathes many, many years ago. I have two of them with my 1916 vintage Southbend 16 x 8 metal lathe. The drawback to most 4 jaw chucks is that each jaw adjusts separately of the others, which makes centering something more of a challenge.

They were used very extensively when a lathe operator needed to machine some type of offset shaft - such as a crankshaft, and did not have a dedicated crank grinder. They were also used to chuck up unusual shapes of metal, such as the head from an old hit and miss gas engine.

[Rod Sheridan]

Scott, I believe the original poster wishes to use a small 4 jaw chuck to hold small bits for woodturning.

I don't think he could hold up a lathe chuck on the end of a gouge handle:D

Regards, Rod.

[Kyle Iwamoto]

Are you looking for a woodturning chuck? Post this on the woodturners forum. Yes they exist, I have 2. You can also get a MT 1/2" drill chuck if you want that too. Just Google woodturing chuck. I'm surprised you couldn't find anything. Penn State Insudtries has relatively inexpensive ones.

[Scott T Smith]

Scott, I believe the original poster wishes to use a small 4 jaw chuck to hold small bits for woodturning.

I don't think he could hold up a lathe chuck on the end of a gouge handle:D

Regards, Rod.


oops... I don't think that a gouge handle would support a 4 jaw machinist chuck very well...

Thanks for the catch, Rod.

[Wes Grass]

A chuck off a horizontal mortiser would probably work, but might be kind of bulky. The ones I've seen have a pair of v-jaws activated by a screw.

The jaws in a tap wrench should be parallel, but might have steps in them to handle a variety of sizes. But you're probably right that they're really designed for a torque load and not a side load like you need.

I'm with Rod re: a bore and set screw. And I know nothing about turning, but can't you buy these off the shelf?

[Ryan Baker]

I'm also with Rod here. Putting a drill chuck on a handle would be an extremely ungainly beast to try to use in addition to being much more expensive and complicated than necessary. There are a lot of commercial solutions that are no more expensive than said drill chuck, or you could make your own bored bars with set screws for a fraction of the cost of the commercial solutions.

[Richard Madison]

Michael, If you already have a four jaw scroll chuck you can easily make (or have made) some auxiliary jaws for it. I wanted to use some 3/4" square stock for finial practice and found some rusty, scrap angle iron to make jaws just to see if it would work. In fact it worked very well. Suggest you make yours from 1/2" square bar stock, drill and countersink the screw holes so the stock jaw screws will be the right length.

[Michael Mills]

Thanks for your replies.
I have one made with a standard ½ jacobs drill chuck and it is not bulky or bad at all to use. Guess you could call it a chuck on a stick. A lot of turners make these.
The chuck of course is always behind the tool rest. To make small specialty tools I can buy high speed steel blanks for 4-8 bucks compared to 20-30+ bucks to buy the entire tool. A (round) blank takes only a minute to swap out whether it is 1/4 or 9/16 inch diameter, same as changing a drill bit.
I have never seen a similar four jaw chuck but that doesn’t mean they aren’t made. So I asked.:) Looks like I will have to make separate handles (for different size square blanks). I thought of taking them to a small machine shop and have 1 or 1 ½ inches at one end turned round to fit the standard chuck. That may be too expensive to make it worth while.
Anyway, thanks again for your ideas and replies. You never know if you never ask.
Mike
Oh, I posted here because this forum is much busier and the said "chuck" may have been made for a use unrelated to woodturning or even woodworking.

[Leo Van Der Loo]

Michael we used to have round pieces of steel specifically made to hold square toolbits, these round pieces could be easily put into a drilled hole and set at any angle you wished and then held with a couple of set screws or welded/brazed into position.
If you get some of those pieces for the different sizes you can use those in your regular drill chuck.
I have never seen jacob style chucks with 4 jaws, the biggest problem with 4 jaw chucks is then not being precise enough, or to make easily at an affordable price.

Sorry, I forgot to add that the round piece with the square opening was slit at on corner so as to be able to hold the toolbit, it was not for fitting the drilled opening, as the opening had to be exactly right or else you couldn't fit the toolbit into it.

[Richard Madison]

Obviously I misunderstood the question, as it seemed strange to want to use a drill chuck as part of a handheld tool. Never mind.

[Mark Hubl]

I think I know what you are thinking. Chuck to hold bits at the end of a tool. If you want to go down that road, you may want to look at collet chucks. The individual collets will closely match you tooling size. I know collets are for round stock. If you are buying square stock it can be rounded to fit collets. Ellsworth rounds square stock and glues it in his tools.

Sorby ( Sovereign) and some others offer tool handles that work like this.

If you are talking about hanging the chuck at the end of the tool, well I have my doubts, unless the work you are doing is on the extremely large size.

Good luck. Let us know what you come up with.

[Scott Conners]

A straight-sided collet chuck can hold square stock pretty well. How about making a pipe handle with a drawbar in it to use a collet? Then you just swap the collet if needed to use a different size bit. You could probably make a wooden handle with a drawbar too if you use some ingenuity.

http://littlemachineshop.com/products/product_category.php?category=874479994

[Leo Van Der Loo]

Re-reading this post, it seems that I should explain the shape of the toolbit holder a little, they are made from a round bar with a square opening through it lengthwise, then there is a slit from end to end in the bar where the square corner comes very close to the outside, this enables a setscrew to hold both the bar and the toolbit at the same time if the toolbit holder isn't brazed in place.
I do have a couple in my shop, and would make a picture of some, but I'm away from home now and for a few weeks yet, so that's not possible now.

[Richard Madison]

Piece of pipe, drilled and tapped for set screw, works well but is not cute.

[Josiah Bartlett]

How about the chuck off an old drill brace? Some of those were four jaw.

Also, McMaster and Enco have tap chucks with a morse taper. A bit expensive.

[Bob Hallowell]

Instead of going theough all that hassle. Why not just turn a wood handle for each tool. Wood is cheap and a copper water fiting for ferrals work great.

Bob

[Tom Wilson66]

The only thing I can think of that might work is the old braces used before electric drills. These used bits with a tapered square end, and might be able to use with an untapered square bit. Just a thought:)

[Michael Mills]

Thanks Creekers for all of your comments and suggestions.
Sorry if I was unclear with my "drill chuck" description. A photo is attached this time (my granddaughter had my camera).
Round blanks; in this case up to ½ inch all fit. Just get a chuck, buy an appropriate bolt to screw into the base of it, cut off the head, and insert the shaft in the handle.
Whatever tool you want to try to make is fine; a wedge, round skew, three point, skewchigouge, or something you dream up. Given these blanks are shorter (about 8 inches) than a normal new tool you right hand is still no father back from the tool rest and is behind the chuck.
An 8" long blank will still give you at least 4" of usable steel. This seems frugal enough for $4–8 a blank of HHS at WT Tools in Charlotte. Since the "twisting force" will not occur (as in a drill press) an expensive chuck is not necessary.
I think Leo had the most usable answer for me. I do agree the jaws in old Brace & Bit type chucks were tapered. There are a lot of turners with many various backgrounds that may have known of a "square chuck" application that I had never heard of.
I will probable just insert square blanks directly into a handle or, it cheap enough have a machine shop turn one end round to fit into the chuck.
Thanks, Mike

[mickey cassiba]

Machine tool "R-8" collets come with a variety of bores including square. These are the collets that are used in the smaller bridgeport style mills. A length of pipe and a draw rod could be used to make a handle sutable to your application. There are even blank "emergency" collets that can be machined to suit your needs.

[mickey cassiba]

A straight-sided collet chuck can hold square stock pretty well. How about making a pipe handle with a drawbar in it to use a collet? Then you just swap the collet if needed to use a different size bit. You could probably make a wooden handle with a drawbar too if you use some ingenuity.

http://littlemachineshop.com/products/product_category.php?category=874479994
Ooops! Scott already covered that.
'scuse me.