Quality of Grizzly vs Shars Chucks

[CJ5Dave]

Sebastian. Yes, will have to make from scratch. Really wanting to use the mounting collar on the old chuck, true it, mount to a plain plate, then true and mount to a chuck.

 

[CJ5Dave]

Not sure if this is clear, threaded collar, 4.6 inch hub, bolted to chuck with 6 cap screws. Want to take this off, true it, bore hole for hub in center of back plate I buy, true the new plate, turn boss and mount to new chuck.

 

[woodchucker]

I need an 8 inch or 10 inch chuck and plain backing plate for my 1942 lathe. I can get them at about the same price from Shars or Grizzly. Yes a Buck would be nice but not in the budget right now. The Grizzly products have free freight, saving about $160. If I get the Grizzly 10 inch chuck I will need to get the Shars back plate as Grizzly only has an 8 inch back plate. Will I lose much on quality with the Grizzly chuck?

I just picked up a Bison chuck on ebay a few months ago. What a great buy, it's tight, it's repeatable , it grabs like nothing else.
I got jaws that I can flip rather than having 2 sets, so no way to lose a set.

 

[woodchucker]

what's going on with your headstocks face? it looks like it's cracked. It also doesn't mate up very well.

 

[CJ5Dave]

No cracks. That's a bearing hub. and the screws are tight. I had to go look. What you are seeing is cracked 80 year old paint. Somebody needs to clean it up and paint it. That casting is about 3 inches thick at that spot.

 

[Illinoyance]

Before you machine a backplate machine a gauge that matches your spindle. Make sure you measure the thread over wires so your gauge is an exact match for the spindle. Use that gauge to check your backplate threads.

 

[G-ManBart]

I need an 8 inch or 10 inch chuck and plain backing plate for my 1942 lathe. I can get them at about the same price from Shars or Grizzly. Yes a Buck would be nice but not in the budget right now. The Grizzly products have free freight, saving about $160. If I get the Grizzly 10 inch chuck I will need to get the Shars back plate as Grizzly only has an 8 inch back plate. Will I lose much on quality with the Grizzly chuck?

New Buch chucks are imported now, and not really that great. I have probably 7 or 8 Bison and Buck (older U.S.) chucks along with a couple of Kalamazoo brand (also U.S.) so I have a pretty good base to compare against. In the past couple of years I've bought four or five SanOu chucks from CME Tools here in Michigan and they're shockingly good. Their 3-jaw set true style (they call them adjustable structure) chucks have no problem getting repeatable .001" runout, which is right there with expensive brands. I have their 8" (really 8-1/4") and 6" versions for my 14" Logan and I'm extremely impressed with them. They don't offer the adjustable style bigger than 8", but their standard 3-jaw scroll chucks are very nice as well...put one of those on a lathe I sold a while back and it was quite nice.

They sell direct and on eBay and sometimes one or the other is cheaper for some reason....worth checking both, but I think they'll be less expensive than either Grizzly or Shars and at least as good from a quality standpoint.

8"/210mm 3-JAW Adjustable Structure SELF-CENTERING LATHE CHUCK #0803AJ | CME Tools

8" - 3 JAWS Self-Centering precision adjustable structure chuck , 8"/210mm Industrial part# : K31-210A Short cylindrical center mounting. Centering accuracy can be improved by adjusting the holding structure to meet very precision machining. TOP QUALITY. AMERICAN STANDARD. TWO PCS TONGUE AND...

cme-tools.com

8"/210mm 3-JAW Adjustable Structure SELF-CENTERING LATHE CHUCK #0803AJ, K31-210A | eBay

8" - 3 JAWS Self-Centering precision adjustable structure chuck, 8"/210mm. TWO PCS TONGUE AND GROOVE REVERSIBLE HARDENED top & bottom JAWS. Back mounting recess dia: 120mm. Industrial part# : K31-210A.

www.ebay.com

 

[CJ5Dave]

The CME products look promising. Wonder if there is enough meat in one of the LO or LOO backing plates (in a matched set with the 10 inch chucks) to bore a recess and mount my 4.6 inch spindle hub. Even nicer but probably not possible would be fit a D6 cam lock mount, then I could swap what I want.

 

[David2011]

Got to agree with G-ManBart regarding CME chucks. I recently got a 6" Adjustable Structure 3 jaw for my 13" lathe. I machined one end of a piece to clean it up, turned it around and left some of the machined surface sticking out for the dial indicator. I indicated it in to the point that the dial indicator needle did not move. So far I've made several things that had to be machined on all surfaces and held concentrically from both ends. It does exactly what it should.

 

[yota]

funny, I just bought one of their 8" semi-finished L1 backing plates to mount the Bison 5C collet chuck from my previous lathe to. should be here late today.