"Bill Rubenstein" wrote in message
. ..
Another possibility is that you use neither Cole jaws nor a Longworth
chuck.

Since both drive the work from the rim, they are useful only for bowls.
Neither is of much help with hollow forms, natural edged bowls, and bowls
with semi-closed shapes.On the other hand, a home made jam chuck works
with all of the above. It does mean that you need to hold the work with
the tailstock so that there is a little hand finishing in the middle of
the bottom. Later on you can set up a vacuum system, use your jam chuck
as a vacuum chuck, and can finish pieces completely on the machine. I
have a couple of bucks in my jam/vacuum chuck.

Even then, you are sometimes going to have to hand finish -- I've recently
turned a hollow form but couldn't vacuum chuck it because of bark
inclusions.

when I have small inclusions that preculde using vacuum, I just fire up the
pump with the piece in place and put scraps of plastic bag over the holes -
the vac holds the pieces in place - this won't work with large holes, but up
to 1/4 inch or so it's not a problem - and it doesn't hurt hte finish, when
you are done, turn off the vac and the pieces fall away.


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