Shopsmith Forums

I’ve been thinking of getting a 3 or 4 jaw lathe chuck and I see that Shopsmith sells the Nova brand. Has anyone used any other brand of chucks?

I have several Oneway Talon chucks, which I really like. Shopsmith used to sell the Talon until they partnered with Nova on the PowerPro. If you have larger projects in mind, Oneway makes the Stronghold chuck. Both have Shopsmith adapters available.

Mike

Been cheap, I selected the Oneway tommy bar version. When I upgraded to a bigger lathe, all I needed was a new adapter to use the chuck. I now have 3 of the tommy bar version. Size wise it is the same as the talon. IMO the tommy bar is much faster to go from small to large diameter than using a key. It compares to turning the collar on a drill chuck to using the key to go from small to large. I am sure you will get lots of disagreement on this. Ha ha.

I bought a Penn State Ind Barracuda chuck and a Shopsmith to 1x8 TPI adapter when I first started using the SS as a lathe. The chuck was good and I still use it on my Jet lathe. However, the adapter had a lot of play in the thread area which induced problems especially when turning bowls, hollow vessels, and other things that were not supported by the tail stock.

I have a Oneway chuck that I bought from Shopsmith years ago and I like it. When I decided to buy a second chuck I bought a Nova. The nova is a good chuck and has very good quality. The one thing that bothered me about the Nova is that the key works backwards. It has a left hand thread and the Oneway has right hand threads. Also the jaws are not cross compatible so different jaws are required for each. If you buy the Nova first you will probably be happy, as I said it is a good chuck. I sold my Nova to a fellow club member and bought another Oneway. My friend is very happy with the Nova.
Once you decide on a brand you will probably have to stay with that brand. The choice will be a personal decision.
Bill V