- Joined
- May 3, 2020
- Messages
- 164
Nothing ground breaking here, I just always find a good cleanup on tools satisfying and like to share. My lathe came with this ratty looking 1/2" capacity Jacobs chuck.
I'm not going to get into the details of how to get one of these apart and service it, as I think that's been covered well by many other online resources. I also don't have a press, so my disassembly method is a little more barbaric using a tool that I'll refer to as an "impact press".
As far as cleaning goes, I'm a big fan of the green flavored concrete and metal prep sold by the gallon under the klean strip name for rust removal. It's primary ingredient is phosphoric acid, which in my experience doesn't tend to eat the base metal, just any oxides that have developed. Plus I've found it makes a great blackening solution when it's heated slightly and parts are well cleaned. A quick 30 minute soak combined with a wire brush got this chuck looking great again!
I did also lightly stone the jaws while they were out to knock off a few burrs from use, but they were in good shape overall. I'm super pleased with the outcome, I honestly didn't expect it to turn out this well. I won't be so quick to count out nasty looking tooling like this in the future. I lubed the internal mechanism with some Mobiltemp SHC32 grease, which is relatively thin NLGI 1.5 that I had from a recent spindle bearing replacement. Aside from looking good, it now opens and closes very smoothly.
I'm not going to get into the details of how to get one of these apart and service it, as I think that's been covered well by many other online resources. I also don't have a press, so my disassembly method is a little more barbaric using a tool that I'll refer to as an "impact press".
As far as cleaning goes, I'm a big fan of the green flavored concrete and metal prep sold by the gallon under the klean strip name for rust removal. It's primary ingredient is phosphoric acid, which in my experience doesn't tend to eat the base metal, just any oxides that have developed. Plus I've found it makes a great blackening solution when it's heated slightly and parts are well cleaned. A quick 30 minute soak combined with a wire brush got this chuck looking great again!
I did also lightly stone the jaws while they were out to knock off a few burrs from use, but they were in good shape overall. I'm super pleased with the outcome, I honestly didn't expect it to turn out this well. I won't be so quick to count out nasty looking tooling like this in the future. I lubed the internal mechanism with some Mobiltemp SHC32 grease, which is relatively thin NLGI 1.5 that I had from a recent spindle bearing replacement. Aside from looking good, it now opens and closes very smoothly.
