Sorby Comination Chuck

[Russell Neyman]

I have a guy offering me a "Robert Sorby Precision Combination Chuck No. 900" for $130. Don't know anything about it or how it works, but thought I'd survey the group before driving an hour to look at it. Is it any good? Sorby's stuff is generally good quality.

[Rick Markham]

Russell, I don't own one. (So keep that fact in mind, hopefully someone has some experience will chime in) It's a collet style chuck which is an older style of chuck. (There's another for sale in Canada for $100) The jaws work like a collet, they slide inside the body and the workpiece fits inside of them. It looks like it originally came with 4 sets of collets 1 3/4", 2", 2 1/2", and 3 1/2". (I believe most people held the collets together with a rubberband to help hold things in place while the chuck is tightened) I'm not sure if it's worth $130 and the drive over there, from what I can find on the internet these were made about 25 years ago. I'd REALLY like to own a set of collets for my lathe, but I'm not sure how useful they would be for most woodturning tasks. Especially anything large. These are some of the bigger ones that I have seen. I also can't find anything that says what size the threading for the chuck is. Looks like they are probably a bit tricky to use, which means they would gather dust in my shop in favor of a newer scroll chuck.

[John Keeton]

Woodcraft has a smaller, but similar one for $99 and Penn State has one for $89. I had one when I first started turning, and they are OK for turning small objects with specific sized tenons, but I sold mine and haven't missed it. I can't imagine this one would be very useful - at least for the work I do.