What is a chuck?
A chuck is any device which holds the piece of wood to be turned on the lathe by gripping it in some way. There are other ways of holding the work – drives, such as the four prong drive, the two prong drive or the cone centre, which work for spindle turning by pushing on the headstock end of the work, with either a dead centre or a live or revolving centre at the tailstock end; these are not generally termed chucks. There are many types of chuck; some of them can be made in the workshop out of scrap timber, such as a jam chuck, where the work is prepared between centres with a spigot, a kind of cylindrical tenon, at one end; this then fits tightly (if you get it right) into a suitably sized recess cut in the scrap wood. The scrap wood needs to be held on another sort of chuck, however. Many other “homemade” chuck designs exist; its worth mentioning the glue chuck, where the work is glued to a piece of scrap which has already been mounted in the lathe – hot melt glue is the preferred op
