It is a good thing that you spin the chuck over SLOWLY to true the jaws.
With that much iron bolted to that little lathe, BACK GEAR is pretty much a necessity just to get it a spinnin'.....or do you have a pull rope hidden somewhere to get it started like your DODGE?
Bill, indeed I do run the lathe in back gear while grinding the jaws.
About the slur aimed at my wonderful DODGE Cummins pu truck. Don't tell me you are joining up with Tel, Keith Spriggs and Brad Smith in their efforts at DODGE bashing. I can't help it because they are stuck with inferior trucks while I have a real workhorse!
About starter ropes: Many years back I saw a starter rope kit offered in J. C. Whitney for use on Volkswagens. Must not have sold/worked well as I only saw it offered that one time. With the compression on that Cummins, it would take two FORDS attached to the starter rope to turn over my engine.
Unka DODGE lover Jesse
"The same hammer that breaks the glass, forges the steel" Russian proverb
Bill old buddy, I have a nice set of collets up to 3/4" but they would slow me down on most of the projects I make. The items are steel ramrods for muskets and are about 36 inches long with a 3/16" shank and 1/2 to 9/16" heads. They have to come out of the chuck from the front because of a stabilizer on the other end of the spindle plus the heads would not pass thru the 3/16" collet. This means they have to be lifted up to clear the tailstock and live centre. By opening the jaws only a little bit over release point, I can raise the rods up between the chuck jaws which gives me a rather large opening, #3 MT spindle and extract the rods over the tailstock with ease. With collets this would be impossible, so you see I am not totally crazy after all!
Unka Jesse
"The same hammer that breaks the glass, forges the steel" Russian proverb
Man I wish I would have read this thread before I turned my pulley I needed. There was a slight wobble, but now I know what I gotta do to fix it , of course I think mine might be the back plate, like some of you guys suggested. Oh well good thread !!
I'll have you know that my VW trunk is just big enough to hold the Tom Thumb and all necessaries for a day of running...and gets 35 MPG up / back to the club track.
NO, I don't have a starter rope for it, and yes I do remember seeing them for the air cooled beetles...but that was about the time that the old beetles ALSO had crank handles supplied by the Fuehrer!
and yes, now that you mention it, I do remeber that you do a lot of work for DGW. sometime I will have to show you my 1/3 scale SBR naval cannon..used to scare off poachers....or more accurately, the deer that the poachers are after...
never seen a 300#'er though......(deer, not poacher)...
Oh...and the jury is still out on the crazy comment....
UnkaJesse wrote: About starter ropes: Many years back I saw a starter rope kit offered in J. C. Whitney for use on Volkswagens. Must not have sold/worked well as I only saw it offered that one time.
All I know is that when the starter died on our old Allis Chalmers Model B and the crank socket wore out, I started it often with a rope wound around the flatbelt pulley.
UnkaJesse wrote: All I know is that when the starter died on our old Allis Chalmers Model B and the crank socket wore out, I started it often with a rope wound around the flatbelt pulley.
Will, I once heard that the first thing that wore out on the old "M" Farmall tractors was the crank and it appears the AC had the same problem. You should have had a 1937 "B" John Deere like I had because it had no crank to wear out. T'was an Armstrong starter operated via finger grips on the backside of the flywheel. Only thing that wore out about it was the hide on my finger tips!
Unka Jesse
"The same hammer that breaks the glass, forges the steel" Russian proverb
Man I,m so glad you guys started this thread, turns out my 3 jaw chuck's backplate was .0007 out of round and the chuck was out by .0006, one of the mounting holes for the chuck was also out by about .0007. So I turned the backplate back to round and the groove that the chuck fits in ( didn,t do anything to the chuck itself) also reamed out the one hole and then remounted the chuck now its within .00015....
ZipSnipe wrote:Man I,m so glad you guys started this thread, turns out my 3 jaw chuck's backplate was .0007 out of round and the chuck was out by .0006, one of the mounting holes for the chuck was also out by about .0007. So I turned the backplate back to round and the groove that the chuck fits in ( didn,t do anything to the chuck itself) also reamed out the one hole and then remounted the chuck now its within .00015....
Zip-------
Those are some pretty impressive numbers.
Somewhat too impressive, I fear. Did you intend to imply that your chuck really runs within tenths of a thou? Soft jaws are great, and can be called upon for close running, but anything under a half thou becomes quite challenging. To accomplish that with hard jaws, particularly if you can achieve the results you spoke of, would be a tall order. Could it be you meant thousandths, not tenths of thousandths? (Example: chuck now runs within .0015" instead of .00015")
Oops, oh yeah did I forget to mention I don,t even know what one click of the needle moving on the indicator reads. Anyway I probably meant to say thousandths. Heres what I did, I took my chuck off, put the indicator on my spindle , and rotated the spindle with no movement on the needle, Good right? Then I took my calipers and measured the groove in the back of the chuck, out by several clicks, and the same on the mating groove on the back plate out by several clicks, so I put the back plate on the lathe and turned out the groove until the indicator didn,t click anymore on the measurement. I also measured the mounting holes to the center of the backplate and found one to be out by a .004, and reamed out that hole, then mounted the chuck, with the indicator on the lathe touching the chuck and got the chuck on within .0015( I tried to get .001 but it kept getting worse the closer I tried to get it) Then I indicated the chuck jaws and found two were good and one out by .008 grinded the jaw until within .002 ( using portable Dremel battery died, after it charges , I,ll grind it until I get .001) And then I also discovered that when you crank the jaws that at different positions in or out the readings were off on the indicator, ummm my chuck sucks !!!! And yes says "Made In China"
Sorry I missed this thread. Without reading the whole thing, I had two bad three jaw chucks. One descibes a circle with a piece of bar like a drunken sword fighter, and the other is just due to mangled jaws, and way off on its chucking. I removed the backing plates that fit my SB lathes and discovered that when indicated, both were bent, probably from wrecks, or crashing the chuck into the rest. The better one got a cut to true it up and it was reasonable. The jaws had a lot of 'rocker ' to them, so I tried running the lathe at top speed and gingerly grinding the jaws, inside, with a high speed die grinder and ball stone. As the stone flattened out, so did the jaws, they being held by the cetrifugal force of the spin. It took some twenty minutes before all three jaws were flat acoss the length, and have served as a three jaw should since then. The other, well , someday I will make a backplate and try that one, but I dont need the chuck right now.
Well I got it within .0015 BUT that was only as I had them open just enough for my part to fit in, if I open them out further they go out again. Of course I been thinkin maybe I need to open the chuck up and clean it out as it is possible that debris is on the chuck jaw track ( whatever its called). But what I did get made a big difference when I turned the part way smoother rotation, however the whole time I was turning I was thinkin damn I should have pushed to get it within .001, oh well, now I know to spend the extra time truing up the jaws as much as possible. Man the old guy that sold me this lathe said he made gun parts! Man, I wonder if he goes to the range if he hits anything.
