Hello Francis,

The only two commercially available vacuum systems for solid spindles, with
which I'm famaliar, are the Vicmarc Vacuum Plate (designed by Vic Wood) and the
VaccuMaster Vacuum Chuck by Sierra Mold. The Vicmarc unit works quite well. The
VacuuMaster I've never seen or had an opportunity to try, but I understand it
works well.

To make a home made rig, I would consider buying the Vicmarc Vacuum Plate,
remove the rubber seal from the plate and glue on or screw on a wooden plate.
You can now cut grooves to accept pieces of PVC Pipe with rubber seals on one
end similar to the Craft Supplies USA vacuum system. Since the plate is threaded
onto the rest of the assembly, the part that mounts to your lathe and to your
vacuum source, you should be able to turn bowls with thick bottoms and threads
to fit on where the plate did. Put rubber on the rim of the bowl and you have a
simple Oneway type cup. You could also use hot melt glue on the rim like Soren
Berger to make a fairly decent seat. Warm the glue by light sanding before
applying the piece to be held by the vacuum chuck.

Incidentally, you could use Petter Herod's method of inlaying epoxy into the
wood to hold a good thread either cut with a threading jig or hand held chasers.
Petter makes threaded boxes using colored epoxy for the threaded area. If would
work in this case also.

I don't know whether this will help or not, but it is a few ideas to think
about.

Fred Holder
http://www.fholder.com/

In article ,
says...

Hi All,

I wondered if any of you have overcome the problem of vacuum chucking
with a solid (ie non hollow) spindle using a shop built jig. Any
alternatives to the (one that I know of) commercially available
system? Any ideas/comments etc would be much appreciated,

Fran in Ireland