Oneway Stronghold jaws: There's a gap between the #2 and #3 jaws

[Roger Feeley]

I was turning something the other day and fell into the gap and couldn't chuck my work. According to the manual, the external capacity of the #2 jaw goes from 1-3". The #3 jaw handles a minimum of 3 7/8" which means that anything between 3 and 3 7/8" can't be held.

What gives?

Is there an aftermarket 2 1/2 jaw set?

[Dick Mahany]

The stronghold #2 jaws can be set for travel up to 3-3/8" (tenon) by placing the single jaw with the travel limit pin in the longer of the two restrictor slots. There will still be a gap between the two sizes, but it does provide a little more coverage if set up that way.

[David M Peters]

This doesn't help you at all, but you should size your mortise/tenon to the perfect circle (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7V1BHYqN0Fk) of your chosen jaws rather than trying to fit your jaws to the mortise/tenon size you have on hand.

It's unfortunate that chuck manufacturers discuss the travel range of their jaws because only the first ~1/4" of travel is really usable. This leads people to believing that they can make an arbitrary tenon size and then simply select a set of jaws whose range fits that size.

[JohnC Lucas]

There were 2 main reasons why I went with the Vicmarc chucks. There isn't a gap between the jaw sets and it uses a standard 10mm hex wrench as the key. Those 2 things easily sold me on the Vicmarc and they have been fantastic. My oldest one is over 15 years old and still works like day one. The 2 vicmarc copies I have both had to have parts replaced after only 5 years or less and the new parts don't fit correctly and had to be extensively filed to work.

[Bill Boehme]

The Oneway premium profiled jaws are contoured to provide good holding over the full range of travel whereas dovetail jaws only provide good holding at the perfect circle diameter. At diameters larger than that the tenon is being pinched at eight sharp points. For precision repeatable holding with a tenon sized to match the perfect circle diameter I prefer the Vicmarc chucks. For everything else I prefer Oneway chucks.

[Barry McFadden]

I'm suprised that there is a gap when using the Stronghold jaws. I have the Oneway Talon chuck and the sizes are.... #2 1 5/8 to 2 7/8 and the #3 2 7/8 to 4.

[roger wiegand]

This doesn't help you at all, but you should size your mortise/tenon to the perfect circle (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7V1BHYqN0Fk) of your chosen jaws rather than trying to fit your jaws to the mortise/tenon size you have on hand.

So after reading this I decided to give it a try on green bowl blanks I've been working on. I have a Vicmarc 120 chuck. I found that when I made the tenon small enough to match the ~2 " "perfect circle" it broke off (twice), sending a 20 lb chunk of tree flying. I've done dozens of similar blanks with a ~3.5" tenon and never had a problem with anything coming loose. I suppose bigger jaws might give me the best of both worlds, but the "8 sharp point" connection on a too big tenon has actually worked quite well. In the green wood they dig in pretty far when you tighten it down.

All by way of saying your milage may vary.

[Leo Van Der Loo]

I'm suprised that there is a gap when using the Stronghold jaws. I have the Oneway Talon chuck and the sizes are.... #2 1 5/8 to 2 7/8 and the #3 2 7/8 to 4.

Yes there is a gap in the size you can hold between the #2 an #3 jaws, even though you can use the total amount of travel of the Oneway chucks with the patented Jaws, I’ve been caught a few times in the last 20 years while using the Stronghold chuck, where I was going to use the #2, but the recess was just a hair to large, while I could not get the #3 to fit into the recess.

Work around was to turn a fitting plug that I then could use as a tenon, works OK, just a bit more work :o.

395718

I’m sure that getting the exact size for fitting the so called dovetail jaws, every time, I would run into this “not exact fit”, I don’t like to be bound by these jaws sizes, with the patented Oneway jaws I have lots of leeway in sizing the recesses to my turnings, rather than to the chuck jaws.