It's always good practice to tighten all the holes in sucession. It
takes out any possible slop in the the chuck, gives you the best
possible hold. You will commonly find one of the holes seems to tighten
things up better than the other 2.

It's mandatory on a 4 jaw chuck, moving one may unsettle the others. In
that case, you need to tighten sequentionally until you get 4 in a row
that show no signs of movement.

darkon wrote:
Here's a question from another newsgroup. Opinions?

[John is in Britain, hence the "Pondian" reference.]


From: John Hatpin
Newsgroups: alt.fan.cecil-adams
Subject: Hey, chuck!
Date: Tue, 28 Feb 2006 23:00:34 +0000
Message-ID:

Frame of reference: you've got an electric drill, or maybe a
hand-drill, and the bit fits into a traditional chuck, tightened
with a key that slots into one of three holes on the chuck and
meshes with a circular, toothed edge at a 90-degree angle. You
know the deal, I'd guess, unless there are major Pondian
differences I'm unaware of.

My father, God bless him, who knows more about tools than I'll
ever comprehend, tightens the chuck by putting the key into each
of the three holes in turn and giving it a final twist from each.
I only tend to do it once in one hole, on the basis that all
you're doing is turning the collar of the chuck, and there's no
difference between doing that with the end of the key in hole 1, 2
or 3.

Assuming I've framed the question adequately, what's your opinion?
Is my lovely old Dad right?