Interesting old lathe chuck...

[Doc Nickel]

Spotted this chuck on eBay, and nabbed a copy of the photo. I'd seen a picture of a very similar chuck years ago, and I think it had been identified back then, but I don't recall the details.



Note the jaws have had new faces welded on, presumably either as a repair for wear.

Kind of a funky old design, anyone have any info on it? (The eBay auction just listed it as "lathe chuck".)

Doc.

[Alan Smith]

It's a UK made chuck. Company called Charles Taylor. They are still reasonably common over here. Never had my hands on one myself but have a reputation for being of good quality.

[redgrouse]

Have a look here http://www.lathes.co.uk/taylor/page3.html

[Richard P Wilson]

Alan is right, thats a Chas Tayor of Birmingham UK chuck. Extremely good quality in their day, has a conical scroll, so the jaw slides are inclined which you can see in the photo. I think the scroll thread is buttress form, must have been very expensive to make.
I had one, it wwas still good even at 50 years old. For some reason they rarely seem to come with their second set of jaws. Pity some one (Clumsy Bugger!) has butchered the jaws. Spares are totally unobtainable.

[BCRider]

My father had one of the Taylor chucks on his old big floor standing Southbend. I'm sure it was a costly item even back then. And normally he was pretty frugal about that sort of stuff. I recall that he was pretty happy to have it. I also recall that it held the work very nicely with just an easy nip of the chuck key.

[old mart]

We have a 5" one at the museum, part of the Atlas lathe tooling. It only has external jaws. One of their adverts was showing how the scroll and jaws alone would hold work, no body needed.

[J Tiers]

I have seen similar looking items on grinders. Always wondered why that shape of jaw. Angled path makes sense.

[BCRider]

The conical nature of the scroll should also make the jaws somewhat self centering, right? I'm thinking that was part of the reason for the added design complexity.... and the higher price that I'm sure went with it?

[old mart]

One reason why the design died out was that the axial length varied according to the diameter clamped.

[The Metal Butcher]

Ironcally,

I knew the exact type of chuck you were talking about by the title alone.

I think these would be very rigid, but I've never seen one in person.

[BCRider]

One reason why the design died out was that the axial length varied according to the diameter clamped.

I worked with my father's Taylor for a good number of years as I aged through my teens and early 20's doing parts for various model airplane and later race car items. The angular travel of the jaws was never an issue. Sure, the position change with diameter. But it simply wasn't an issue at all.

And if I were working on multiples of anything then they would already be the same diameter. And so the jaws would have ended up axially at the same position anyway.

I strongly suspect that it died out primarily due to the extra manufacturing operations, perhaps specialty equipment and thus higher expense that lacked any big advantage over the usual flat scroll style.

[BCRider]

I do recall that my Dad was like a kid that got the wildly optimistic request that they asked for at Christmas over the chuck. And I have to admit that some of that transferred to me. I still can't see the name "Taylor" in connection with machine tools without thinking that they are up there with other superior brand names....So consider me mildly biased.

I do recall that it was a very neatly made item. Smooth as silk and consistent as heck. Zeroing items at that point in my learning curve was way beyond me. But I do recall that my Dad didn't use the four jaw much after getting the Taylor. At least not for items needing zero runout. So perhaps that was the conical movement coming into play?

[CalM]

One reason why the design died out was that the axial length varied according to the diameter clamped.

For the life of me, I can not see the draw back of that aspect in chucking work.

[djc]

For the life of me, I can not see the draw back of that aspect in chucking work.

old mart makes a good point and there is a very subtle clue, either genius or perhaps accidental, in your own reply.

If you had a bed stop set for whatever reason (maybe parting off close to the jaws, so the parting tool would not hit them), you'd have to reset the stop for every diameter.

If you have a front stop set for stock length, the closing action of the jaws would indeed draw back the stock slightly into the spindle, messing up your length calculations.

However, with an in-spindle backstop (similar to the type you can get for 5C collets), you'd have very sure length registration with a Taylor chuck as it would pull the stock positively against the stop.

In the collet world, it is the difference between dead length (front closing) collets and drawbar/tube collets.

[old mart]

As only Taylor seems to have made this design of chuck, either because of the extra precision required over the standard chuck design, or a patent being enforced, it died out when the manufacturer ceased making them. I have never seen one in as new condition up for sale.