MOWRER WW LATHE TOOLS: Chucks for the WW lathe

You can never have too many chucks so I have made several over the past year. These include:

A dog driving center chuck with a brass counter balance

Dog driver chuck for the WW lathe

The brass counter balance is riveted in place and then turned flush. You can see the rivets on the back side. The center point is removable and employs a standard taper so that I can swap in male and female centers.

Dog driver chuck for the WW lathe

The drive leg is adjustable in and out from the center (and boy has that come in handy). This is beefier than the typical Watchmakers lathe dog chuck as I'm not making watch parts and need the greater strength for steel parts and parts of great diameter. It works beautifully and I like the marriage of brass and steel.

Dog driver chuck for the WW lathe

kk I found a set of split leg lathe dogs of the right sizes on eBay for a very reasonable price (largest is show in photo). These too look really terrific and are the right solution for the chuck.

Lathe split leg drive dog

3 inch diameter clamping face plate for oddly shaped parts.

The tiny clamping fingers were designed in CAD and printed in metal through shape ways. They work so very well and the cost was quite low. I can print more any time I need them.

Custom clamping faceplate for WW lathe

Small metal finger clamp for WW lathe faceplate

Custom clamping faceplate for WW lathe

Clamping faceplate for WW lathe in use

Drill chuck centering collet

I purchased a nice little jacobs chuck for use in the WW lathe as well as an adapter collet from a chinese supplier. The chuck was fine but the collet was badly made having both radial inconsistencies as well as angular deviation. This rendered the drill chuck unusable when mounted.

I decided to make a custom adjustable mount that I could carefully mount and center the chuck with. This worked so well, I'm making a full set for all the other chucks. The threaded adapter is a separate part and the collet has slightly oversized holes in it for adjustment. I lightly attach the two together and carefully tap the chuck into perfect alignment (testing it with my dial indicator as I go). Once it's right on, I remove the collet holding the chuck and really cinch the cap screws down.

Back onto the lathe it goes for a concentric dressing cut and it looks good and has tremendous accuracy now.

Drill chuck centering collet for WW lathe

IMPORTANT please read

Important Change Notice!

Hello friends and visitors. I am taking a temporary hiatus from offering the parts shown in this blog on shapeways. I have had many inquiries and a lot of effort has gone into preparing the parts for sale. Unfortunately, 3D printing of parts one at a time is not as cheap as mass market bulk castings.

There is not enough demand to have the parts bulk cast and doing so would also mean a change of material from the wonderful Bronze infused Stainless Steel.

The metal printed kits come in well under the cost of purchasing completed new parts from the likes of Levin and such but are significantly more expensive than the lower functionality antique items on Ebay.

I have found that the market is generally at the lower end of the spectrum.

I am presently reworking how I might be able to bring the costs down on the parts somewhat and will notify you through this posting when they are ready for kit purchase.

Thanks and cheers, Kevin

WELCOME

Hello Blog visitors and welcome to my blog about the adventures of creating high quality, new tools for the antique WW watchmakers lathe. Nearly a year ago I acquired an 8mm American Watch tool company lathe from a local antique store. It was not in the very best of shape but I am someone who loves to rescue machines of quality and bring them back into service. I am also an inventor and an artist and this beautiful little lathe captured my interest.

Once I'd managed to carefully bring it back to working condition, I decided I wanted to have certain functionalities for it to solve some of it's challenges in doing the kind of work I wanted to use it for. It worked so well for very small brass parts and removal of very small amounts but I wanted to do this kind of high accuracy work on some longer and more robust pieces of material.

What began as a project to make a superior steady rest has turned into many other tools adding various functions and abilities to the lathe.

The results are chronicled throughout this blog.

I hope you enjoy the process posted here.

Cheers and enjoy! Kevin Mowrer

MOWRER WW LATHE TOOLS

Chucks for the WW lathe

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