Oneway flat jaws- how useful

I don't know, Bill.. but hope this thread helps us both..

I've got the jumbo jaws and have "almost" bought the flat jaws several times to play with making jaw sets... I keep visualizing something like a bowl shaped piece like you'd use for a jam chuck, cut in 4 quarters and used on the flat jaws to expand inside the work.. Mac

Hi Bill When does one consider money "well spend" for a hobby ??, or is this business ?? It depends a lot on what kind of turning you do, but I have several sizes of 1/4 pies for my mega jumbo jaws in order to hold larger platters and bowls for reverse turning and cleaning up the feet, and holding shapes that are not safe to hold with just the rubber bumpers that come with the jumbo jaws. For small turnings the rubber bumpers can be screwed right onto the chuck to hold some shapes just fine, but for certain shapes it would be very hard to do without special jaws and then those flat jaws are a god send, like lets say you want to turn a bunch of egg shapes and rather than hand sand that last parted off end, you could make some jaw to hold them and do the final sanding and shaping in the lathe, yes there are other ways to do this but jaws like these can hold them more easily when the sizes are little off, like I said "it depends", just another trick up your sleeve.

$30.-- spend better on those jaws than a bottle of booze IMO.

Have fun and take care Leo Van Der Loo

Hi Mac What's stopping you ?? it does not have to be fancy to do those things, just imaging, you take 4 chunks of 4X4 you screw those onto the flat jaws, turn a groove into them, even just into the corners will do a lot of times, now you have that whatever shaped bowl you could not hold before and place it on the just made jaws and open up your chuck and your ready to finish that bottom or whatever, carefully. I very often use masking tape to keep jaws from damaging turnings, double sided tape with a small piece of cloth on the the outside works fine also, just more of a hassle, but needed sometimes. There are all kinds of ways to do things, just use your imagination and $35.-- won't break the bank !!

Have fun and take care Leo Van Der Loo

I might now Derek, since I finally got the vac system on both lathes...

I've been keeping one chuck dedicated to the jumbo jaws with the normal feet in the hope that I'll finish more bowls... I have the bad habit of letting bowls that are done except for the bottom stack up until "I get the jumbo jaws on"...

Some are so warped by that time that I HAVE to use the vacuum chuck.. lol

Mac

Mainly too many irons in the fire, Leo... I tend to get distracted from one project to make a new jig or take on some new thing... (like the damn pen addiction)

Right now, I have the jumbo jaws and the vacuum chuck... before those, I should have bought the flat jaws... Then again, I should have bought the jumbo jaws at least a year before I did, and not used all that time trying to build ring clamps, friction chucks, etc...

Mac

Why buy a set of flat jaws? They appear to be a means to attach other jaws to the chuck. The sliders, or whatever they are correctly called, already are threaded for bolts to hold jaw attachments. Why not make your own set of jaws for the the sliders? I am away for a couple of weeks on a course (theology, not woodworking) but when I get back I will tackle the idea for the web page. By the way, this is for those of us who enjoy making our own tools. The cost of the flat jaws is certainly not prohibitive. On the other hand, who else is going to use the things except someone who likes to make their own tools?

Hi Darrell

Yes your right Darrell, you can use the master jaws for screwing soft jaws onto them, and I have done so in the past, the problem with that is as I found out, there is a very small footprint and the screws are very close to the narrow end of the soft jaws, it's not very strong when using wood, the flat jaws give you a larger base to screw your soft jaws onto and the metal of the flat jaws has more strength than wooden ones.

Have fun and take care Leo Van Der Loo

Guys, what am I missing here? I've got a Stronghold and a Talon. I thought I'd gotten all except the Jumbo jaws. "Flat jaws" and "soft" are losing me. Got to mb my flaw I'm sure but help me understand. Thanks.

TomNie

Tom The idea of a flat jaw is that it is not really a jaw per se, it is a flat piece that attaches to the sliders and makes it easy to attach home made jaws. In other words, they are base pieces for hame made jaws. Soft jaws are just that, jaws made from softer material than metal, say plastic, wood, UDF or what have you.

They look like this, Tom...

I'm sort of guessing that the threaded holes might fit the holders from the jumbo jaws, too... (before the vacuum chuck, I would have liked to use the jumbo jaws on the mini, but they were a little too jumbo)

Mac

One's a jig, one a jaw.