Anyone using an eccentric chuck?

I was looking at the escoulen chucks in woodturners catalog and thinking they would be kinda fun...

Are they difficult to set up and use?

Do you need to spend $350 for the Deluxe or is the slightly less expensive Standard ok for most stuff?

I sort of hate to invest a bunch of money on another toy that I end up not using...

mac

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mac davis
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"mac davis" wrote: (clip) I sort of hate to invest a bunch of money on another toy that I end up not using... ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ I watched Escoulen demo his chuck, and I must say two things:

1.) The chuck is really elegant. 2.) His work is so weird I am not interested in buying a chuck to do what he does.

So I made an inexpensive substitute. I turned a vacuum chuck which has a large concave spherical surface. I can hold my work off axis, out to the edge of the gripping surface. I did a couple of oddball things with it, and then lost interest.

It has one important advantage over Escoulen's chuck. When the wood is tilted off-axis, it spins in a conical orbit. Escaulen's wood has the tip of the cone at the chuck end, and the free end of the wood is spinning in a circle. My wood has the tip of the cone ON AXIS, where it can be supported by the live center. The large end of the cone is held in the vacuum chuck, so both ends of the work are supported.

An advantage of Escoulen's chuck is that it gives you measured and reproducible offset settings--my crude system doesn't have that.

Reply to
Leo Lichtman

Try this link it might not work.

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Reply to
Canchippy

That sounds interesting, Darrell ... did you take any pictures of it? I've never noticed it on your site..

mac

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Reply to
mac davis

I don't want to do really far out things, I don't think... More of a mild offset once in a while or maybe a few goblets...

I saved the stuff below for a few cups of coffee later... having trouble with the picturing it...

mac

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mac davis

mac

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Reply to
mac davis

Hello Mac,

I have both of the Escoulen Chuck, the Robert Sorby Eccentric Chuck, and the Axminister Eccentric Chuck. They all allow you to do things that are difficult to do with normal chucking systems. I personally don't have enough imagination to fully use any of them. That said, you can do stuff similar to the Escoulen Chuck with a standard chuck with teeth in it like the Oneway chucks, but without the precision adjustment of the Escoulen Chuck. You can also get the offset effect of the Sorby and Axminister chucks with two pieces of wood mounted on a faceplate and a lot of screws. Michael Werner just demonstrated this at the Utah Woodturning Symposium in June. You can also get the effects of the regular Escoulen Chuck by using a Ball Chuck like I use for the Chinese Balls and holding a wooden ball in it with the workpiece attached to the ball. Finally, you can do some awsome pieces of eccentric turning between centers.

What I'm really saying is that it is not necessary to purchase one of the eccentric chucks on the market to do eccentric turning. They do make the task a bit easier and less fiddley. The $350 Escoulen Chuck is a awsome piece of work and allows you to do many things, giving two methods of eccentricity in in single chuck.

Fred Holder

Reply to
Fred Holder

I got the opportunity to obtain one of the Kelton eccentric faceplates with an angle face plate and a balancer last year. It dwarfs the others and permits mounting a regular 4 jaw chuck. My only problem is finding the time to use it. (lots of ideas but only about 1 afternoon a week to use the lathe) I've been studying the geometry of the possibilities but only on paper. I've done a couple pieces to test it out but I'd like to see what others have done (something besides odd candle sticks).

One of my test pieces was a hollow form but I discovered that it was too small to place the opening too far off center

Reply to
william kossack

Fred, did you get a chance to look at the Vicmarc at Portland?

Reply to
Ralph E Lindberg

The Vicmarc booth in Portland was so franic with customers that I barely spoke with anyone except Victor's wife and to ask permission from Victor to use one of their VL-100's to turn a couple of Chinese Balls, one of which I have to Victor's wife.

If they had their eccentric chuck at the show, I didn't see it. I did, however, get an opportunity to see it on a computer screen when we visited the Vicmarc plant last September, but Victor asked me not to publicise it at that time. The design looked good and I made a couple of suggestions for what I thought would be imporvements. If it is on the market, I would guess it will be an excellent chuck as all of their products are very well made.

Fred Holder

Reply to
Fred Holder

Thanks, Fred... very concise and helpful.. maybe you should do this for a living ;)

My fear is that I'd blow the $300 to $400 and the chuck would end up being an expensive shop decoration..

I think I need to play with my Oneway Talon a bit and maybe a jig or 2 and see if I even LIKE eccentric turning...

mac

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Reply to
mac davis

In one of your abundant periods of idle time, right Darrell?

You were in my thoughts this morning as I banged another finger while sanding an angel wing bowl... ;)

mac

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Reply to
mac davis

Hello Mac,

Another experiement you can do that will give you the effects of the Escoulen original chuck is to make up one of my Ball Chucks from a PVC Compression Fitting, fit a round ball in it, turn a flat spot on the surface of the ball, inbed a good screw from the back side to make it into a screw chuck. This will allow you to do most of the things the Escoulen Chuck will do. It will just be made of wood and plastic and will not stand up as well as the Escoulen chuck made of steel. If you don't have instructions for making one of my ball chucks, e-mail me at and I'll e-mail you a pdf of the instructions. The main thing one needs is a good imagination and then the sky is the limit for what you can do with these chucks. I'm a bit short on imagination, but long on problem solving.

Fred Holder

Reply to
Fred Holder

The only place I actually saw one was attached to a Robust in the CSUSA booth. It did look, impressive!!

Reply to
Ralph E Lindberg

snip

Not sure about awesome, but you can do some strange looking stuff using multi-centers "between centers. Being able to visualize what you want and then figure out the centers necessary to do it is beyond my visualization capabilities - so far. Probably if I did 20 or so pieces AND documented the procedure for each one I might be able to "see" and predict the details for going from desired results and the centers to get there. Here's a technique I've been working on to "see" things.

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And here's the Ball and Chuck method for trying the one type of turning the Escoulen ball chuck is designed to do.
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> What I'm really saying is that it is not necessary to purchase one of > the eccentric chucks on the market to do eccentric turning. They do > make the task a bit easier and less fiddley. The $350 Escoulen Chuck > is a awsome piece of work and allows you to do many things, giving two > methods of eccentricity in in single chuck. The Ball and Chuck method only gets you one of the two methods of chucked eccentric turning. The Escoulen chuck adds moving the drive/ chuck end center off center.

Play with this stuff. Fun - but for me at least - unpredictable.

charlie b

Reply to
charlieb

You ever sell any, Darrell? Everybody handles 'em, nobody buys here. Some are pretty neat, too. I end up giving them away. Haven't made one in over a year.

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Putting a dark background behind light wood, light behind dark wood helps keep your knuckles away from the edges. That, and keeping your hand behind the rest!

Reply to
George

George.. I can't answer for Darrell, but I've sold very few wing bowls... OTOH, being a big fan of keeping my knuckles and not tearing too many h&l disks off the drill, I've evolved my wings to a shorter, more rounded type of thing and have sold quite a few as "change dishes".. The nice thing about them is that the wood is free... I turn them out of the bark section that gets cut off the bottom of a log when cutting bowl blanks.. I used to make my 4 cuts and end up with 2 blanks and 3 firewood pieces, now the pith cut is the only firewood..

mac

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Reply to
mac davis

I've displayed them with a batch of silk flowers and pinecones - centerpiece stuff. Or, if you turn a bit of a lip on the bottom, a holder for a votive light. Oh well, they're a fun turning, but they sell as poorly as "hollow forms" here.

Reply to
George

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