Chuck Key

Having made several myself, I think the end needs to be hardened and tempered. Lots of leverage on that tiny end to deform it!
 
AGCB97 said:
Having made several myself, I think the end needs to be hardened and tempered. Lots of leverage on that tiny end to deform it!
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I've never hardened anything before, can you give a bit of a walk through?
 
Heat it red with a torch or whatever else you may have then quench in water. Then heat slowly till it just gets steel blue and let cool naturally in air. Just the end 1 or 1 1/2" would be good
 
Heat until a magnet won't stick to it, water quench. put it in a 400* oven for 1 hour for every inch thickness, turn the oven off and let cool overnight.

Sent from somwhere in east Texas by Jake!
 
I made mine from 17-4 stainless tool stock and it has lasted over 10 years. I do have access to small heat treat furnace so I did take the material to H900 spec hardness, which is simply 900 degrees F for 1 hours then air cooled. The material really needs to be strong more than it needs to be hard and i suspect the Rockwell C35 as purchased condition would work well. If you are using cold rolled steel round 1018 etc. you wont get much "hardness" as the steel has too low a carbon content. Easy to obtain tool steels like 4140 pre heat treated and S7 drill rod would work well as purchased. Your steel supplier should be able to provide at least rough heat treat guidelines should you desire. In the modern era a google search would most likely locate the information as well.
 
I agree with the above - the key needs to be tough instead of hard. Commonly available 1144 Stressproof is what I use. Put it in a collet block and mill the 4 sides. Turn off the corners slightly on the lathe and radius the nose with a file. Drill for the handle and you're done.
 
I'm gonna try this one out first since I already started. And playing around with the heat treating should be educational at the least.
I'm going to have to figure out a reasonably local supplier for things like drill rod. Otherwise my local steel supplier has lots of stuff. A fairly wide selection of shaft stock too.
 
I can't use too hard of steel cause my limited selection of end mills aren't great. If I can't mill it, I'd have to grind it, and that's no fun.
 
Hukshawn said:
If I can't mill it, I'd have to grind it, and that's no fun.
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I've had to grind down several lathe chuck keys for various reasons. I never even considered milling them. It was much quicker and easily accurate enough to grind them. I just used a check gauge and usually get the job done in 10 - 15 minutes.
 
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