Yeah, the Pro Tek overall looks like an upgrade from the original. Looking back at the graphic now I am a little confused because it says my G3 is a steel alloy, but it looks Nickel plated to me, i.e. I can't tell a difference in appearance between the G3 Pro Tek and my G3. David is correct that clockwise versus counterclockwise is related to closing the jaws together to the origin of the chuck jaws. It does get confusing, depending on what you are turning. I still consider myself a newbie at woodturning and I often get it confused when I chuck/un-chuck material from the chuck jaws. So, I have the G3 (not the Pro Tek) and it is a counterclockwise tightening which means if I turn the T handle clockwise it will expand the jaws (opposite of tightening them), but this actually tightens the jaws into a tenon, e.g. on the bottom of a bowl you are turning. Makes perfect sense, turn clockwise and you tighten in the application, even though the jaws are loosening (expanding). Clamping down on something in the jaws, such as the pin jaws, then becomes counter-intuitive on mine because I have to turn counterclockwise on the T handle to tighten on the object that is being turned. It really comes down to the application, i.e. what are you turning because what is intuitive for one case and one person will be counter-intuitive for another. Below is something from the description for the Pro Tek on TeknaTool's website. Basically between the G3 and the G3 Pro Tek, Nova decided to change their intuition!DLB wrote: ↑Mon Nov 13, 2023 8:40 pm This is a great question. I think it refers to the direction you turn the key to tighten the jaws. The problem with that theory, though, is sometimes you tighten jaws down on something like a tenon and other times you tighten the jaws by expanding them in a mortise. So direction of tightening depends more on what you are turning. On my Super Nova, which I think is another variant from the same manufacturer, CW with the key spreads the jaws. And it has standard righty-tighty threads between SS adapter and chuck. There is a setscrew that tightens down on the adapter threads to allow for bi-directional turning. I don't recall ever seeing a LH thread adapter.
- David
I really like my Nova G3 chuck and the Nova G3 Pro Tek just looks like a slight refinement of it. There are better chucks out there and I have gotten feedback from some of the expert turners on this forum in the past on some of them. Perhaps they will chime in here with their feedback. I haven't gotten to needing a new chuck yet, but once you start turning you start to see the desire to have more than one chuck on hand so that you can swap off between projects and keep them still chucked in between, I believe.Excerpt on Pro Tek from Nova website: https://www.teknatool.com/products/chuc ... es-chucks/
"Intuitive clockwise scroll rotation for ease of use."
P.S. Ron referred me to the Supernova 2 manuals as a reference to use for the G3 in the past and it was really helpful. At that time, the Nova G3 manual was rather sparse, but there is much more technical detail and instruction in the Supernova 2 manual and most of it is applicable to the Nova G3 so don't be afraid to look at the Supernova 2 manual for comparison. I believe the Supernova 2 chuck is their flagship model and the G3 is the little brother version. Including the links below. The last link is the thread where I learned my mistake of re-chucking a workpiece and not knowing I would get concentric errors from doing so. At first I thought it was a runout problem on the G3, but then I was educated that rechucking necessitates having to re-turn sections of the woodturning...hence an advantage of having more than one chuck on hand for various projects.
https://teknatool.freshdesk.com/support ... ck-manual-
https://teknatool.freshdesk.com/support ... ss-lathes-
viewtopic.php?p=280035#p280035
RF Guy