According to :

DoN. Nichols wrote:
According to Bruce Barnett :

Lots snipped

His lathe(which is the same as mine) is supposed to be able to take a
5" chuck(with adaptor):

Note -- he was wanting to get a three-jaw chuck with soft jaws.
The general practice is to have the diameter of a three-jaw chuck half
the maximum swing over the bed.

This is because at some settings, the jaws (which are
*typically* not reversible) can extend out far enough to risk hitting
either the bed, or perhaps the arms of the carriage.

Four-jaw chucks typically can have each individual jaw reversed
at need to hold awkward shapes.

Three jaw chucks also have the additional mechanism of the
scroll plate and the gearing from the keys to the scroll plate, which
makes for a longer and a heavier chuck.

As an example, on my 12x24" Clausing, I'm happy with a 6"
(actually 6-1/4") three-jaw, but I use a 10" 4-jaw. And -- they are of
similar weights.

I was getting ready to purchase the following until this thread, now
I'd better wait and see.
http://www.littlemachineshop.com/pro...ProductID=2346

Note that is a 4-jaw chuck, not the three-jaw which he was
looking at. And soft jaws on a 4-jaw (with independent motion of each
jaw) don't really work out well.

Though I have no idea what how much of that chuck's capacity can be
used, I always thought that X inches meant that "X" was the largest
diameter the work piece could be.(That shows what I know).

"X" inches is the overall diameter of the chuck body. To that
must be added the extension of the jaws when they are adjusted to hold
larger workpieces.

Some (typically quite small) three-jaw chucks come with
reversible jaws.

More often, they come (or are at least available with) two sets
of jaws, one the normal set for gripping relatively small things on the
outside, and for gripping larger things on the inside. The second set
is the reverse, and is primarily for gripping larger things on the
outside, with a reduced length of grip.

The ones which can accept soft jaws are typically two-piece
jaws. A hardened set of master jaws which remain in the chuck, and sets
of jaws which bolt onto the masters. What typically comes with the
chuck is a hardened set of top jaws. Soft jaws are available to fit the
same master jaws. They can be either aluminum (really soft jaws), or a
mild steel (which is more common, except in the little 3-jaw chucks for
the Taig, which are non-standard in several other ways as well.

BTW I tried to answer an e-mail from you on the 21st, and my mail server
was unable to establish communications with your mail server. So, I did
not ignore the e-mail, your mail server does not like me for whatever
reason. Here are the headers:


================================================== ====================
Return-Path:
Delivered-To:
Received: (qmail 1921 invoked for bounce); 21 Feb 2006 19:41:51 -0000
Date: 21 Feb 2006 19:41:51 -0000
From:
To:
Subject: failure notice

Hi. This is the qmail-send program at d-and-d.com.
I'm afraid I wasn't able to deliver your message to the following addresses.
This is a permanent error; I've given up. Sorry it didn't work out.

:
Sorry, I wasn't able to establish an SMTP connection. (#4.4.1)
I'm not going to try again; this message has been in the queue too long.

--- Below this line is a copy of the message.

Return-Path:
Received: (qmail 28538 invoked by uid 100); 14 Feb 2006 18:14:49 -0000
Date: Tue, 14 Feb 2006 13:14:49 -0500
From: "DoN. Nichols"
To:
Subject: Tool Terms
Message-ID:

[ ... rest snipped because as usual it was large ... ]

================================================== ====================

It is the same e-mail address which you use in your newsgroup
headers. But I can't reach that system, even with a ping.

Enjoy,
DoN.
--
Email: | Voice (all times): (703) 938-4564
(too) near Washington D.C. | http://www.d-and-d.com/dnichols/DoN.html
--- Black Holes are where God is dividing by zero ---