Adjustable Sticky Chuck

I am a big fan of sticky chucks. I have been using them for many years and I have not had one let go yet. In fact, the big plates with a large surface area can be a little difficult to get off, something I find quite reassuring. You can mount work from a finished face without leaving a mark and the sticky plate can be removed, still attached to the work, and replaced in a chuck without losing the centre. If however, you need to mount a piece of work and centre it accurately on a sticky plate there is a slice of luck required or a lot of fiddling about melting and nudging the work until centred.

Assembled adjustable chuck.

I have been thinking about making an adjustable sticky chuck for some time which would work rather like an independent 4-jaw chuck, so the work can be centred whilst on the lathe, solving the problem.

Sticky plate (left), and chuck body.

This picture shows the sticky plate, left of the image, and the lathe mounting with the 4 brass sticky plate centring screws. Locking screws pass through the holes on the steel mounting plate to secure the sticky plate when centred. The brass screws can then be removed if you are concerned about catching your fingers on them.

Rear view of chuck.

The back view of the assembled chuck shows 3 of the 4 cap head sticky plate locking screws. The whole assembly screws directly to the lathe spindle nose.

The picture below shows a re-worked 10 inch vase. The lattice and rim above the pattern ring were cut off and what remained was mounted on the sticky chuck as close to centre as I could judge it. A dial gauge was set against the vase just above the pattern where the replacement lattice was to be glued and the chuck was centred (run out +/=.15mm). The work was turned flat and the replacement lattice was glued on. Incidentally, the bottom of the vase, where it attached to the chuck had more than 2mm of run-out. What can you do, it’s wood and it moves? However, it was accurately centred where it needed to be.

13 May 2021

This turns out to be one of the best, and most useful tools I have made. I have had several occasions when I wanted to accurately pick up the centre on a workpiece and this does it really easily and very accurately without having to undo and re-centre, which is a complete pain in the neck and very hit or miss. You do need an engineering dial indicator gauge to do the job very accurately, although using the old pencil method works too if you don't have a dial gauge, and will be good enough for all but the most demanding of tasks.

4 September 2021

If you have a tilt in the plane that would define the surface of a face plate, and this can happen if you get a bit of glue say on the jaw mounting face, then you can't correct it using this chuck. So be careful that all is true if you know you will need to re-mount or you will be cursing and fiddling about using shims like I was.