Good question. I have several reasons.
1. I have way too much money to get rid of. (Just kidding, scratch that and start over!) Some people buy lottery tickets and lots of beer - I buy chucks. Actually, some of my chucks I bought used for cheap or for trade. For most of the others I just kept my eyes open for a good deal. One was given to me by a friend.
- I hate to change jaws. No, I REALLY hate to change jaws. I'd rather have a chuck dedicated to a particular set of jaws.
- I like to have several chucks mounted with duplicates of the jaws I use the most - for example pin jaws, 35mm jaws, 45mm jaws, and 50mm jaws. I think I have four or five chucks with 50mm jaws mounted.
- I often have several projects in progress and leave a project in a chuck while I work on something else. If a piece is removed from a chuck, it is often difficult to register it precisely when remounting due to the nature of wood. Extra chucks? - just leave it mounted. I've had one project on my shelf for a year now - still in the chuck. I'll get back to finishing it any day now...
- Some operations can benefit from multiple chucks. For example, keep the base of a bowl in the chuck while turning a jam chuck from a block of wood held by a second chuck, then mount the first chuck on a tailstock adapter while jamming (and taping) for perfect registration the first try.
- When doing demos, I sometimes have several pieces in various stages of completion, each in a chuck. This lets me switch to another stage without boring everyone with all the finish cuts on the first one. Also, I sometimes have a piece turned entirely with the finish cuts and leave it in the chuck so I can demonstrate smoothing with negative rake scrapers and by hand. Leaving it mounted avoids any registration problems from remounting and the need to make additional finish cuts before the smoothing.
- I sometimes use multiple chucks for different parts of the same project. For a recent project I left a test piece mounted in one chuck that I returned to a couple of times to try some ideas. The project was mounted in another chuck to turn and drill a center hole. I used a third chuck (with different jaws) to hold a piece of wood to turn a mandrel to jam hold the finished piece to clean up the bottom.
- I have a special set of pin jaws on one chuck that I turned down to a precise size for a special application. If I remove and remount those jaws lather, especially on a different chuck, I may lose some of the precision so I keep them in the same chuck. (Did you know you can easily turn steel chuck jaws with woodturning tools?)
- I have two lathes set up in the shop at all times. Sometimes I'll have a project in progress on one lathe and take a break and work on a different project at the other lathe and just leave the first setup as is. For example, when set up with a sphere jig or threading jig I don't want to tear down the setup. An extra chuck makes this easier to do something on the second lathe.
- I am slowly buying new Supernova2 chucks as I find them on sale to replace some older Supernova chucks (the ones with the horrible chuck keys). I may end up selling or giving away some of the older chucks.
- I have four chucks loaned out at the moment to students and friends. I probably wouldn't do this if I didn't have extra chucks on hand!
- One chuck is a Nova Titan with large jaws. I don't often do big work but when I do it is nice to have this chuck on hand.
- I sometimes have a student or two. It is useful to leave a project in a chuck when a student can't return to finish until a few days or a week later. Once I had two students and hauled in a third lathe to demonstrate. Extra chucks make all this easier.
The turning alcove of my shop with a couple of students.
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JKJ