Newbie Question: Vase Turning

[Scott Hussey]

Hi all,

I'm new to turning and to this forum(love it by the way) and have made a couple of bowls and am working on a small vase.

The vase is only about 7" tall by about 3.5" in diameter.

I have roughed out the outside and cut a tenon to mount on my grizzly chuck. I have mounted it and have begun turning the inside.

My problem is that is continues to come loose in the chuck as I am taking wood off the inside. I've had to tighten it several times.

I'm looking for some advice from you experienced folks on technique for mounting a vase to hollow out the inside.

I have to be doing something wrong.
Any help/advice would be great.

Thanks,

Scott

[ryan kelley]

Scott, make sure the shape of your tenon matches the shape of your chuck jaws. also the end of your tenon should not be touching your chuck.

[Eric Kosanovich]

Some one had pointed me to this pic. maybe it will help you.
Ops it's a pdf file anyway i hope it helps.

[alex carey]

agreed, the tenon probably doesn't fit right. Nice diagram, should do the trick.

[charlie knighton]

i use a steady and this is how i normally chuck it, scroll down to the pictures in this thread

http://www.sawmillcreek.org/showthread.php?t=132623

the pros will have a much larger portion of wood left above the chuck til the very end, for safety keep as much wood on the form close to the chuck as possible

[Brian Novotny]

I'm guessing that you are using 25mm jaws which in my opinion are too small to hold a vessel that big for hollowing......you could try a steady rest, or go up to 100mm jaws, or better yet I use Nova "Tower jaws" for my hollowing which has almost 2" of tenon holding ability. Also what grizzly chuck are you using, the $100 good one, or one of their others? If it's anything other than the top of the line grizzly you need to trade up. One solution that I could almost guarentee to work is Penn St. industries just came out with a 3 wheel/spindle/bowl/vessel steady rest for less than $50 I think......even with the best chucks once a vessel gets to a certain length many people use a steady rest, but you're number one option, which is what alot of people do when hollowing is just use a faceplace, just drill about 6 more holes in the one that came with your lathe.

[Allen Neighbors]

Brian hit the nail smack on the head.

[Matt Hutchinson]

I tried messing around with some blanks about the same size as you mentioned, attempting to hold them with the normal dovetail jaws. (I was feeling lazy, and didn't want to switch jaws :) ) It didn't work well. So I switched to shark jaws (a Vicmarc jawset) and it work perfectly. They hold about a 1.125" long tenon, and I can take rather heavy cuts on a 7-8" blank with no worries.

Hutch