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I've been using a Beall collet chuck for years now, and have recommended them to folks asking how to best hold rod stock in their lathe. Thing with collet chucks is that there is practically zero runout, and the hold is ridiculously secure - I greatly prefer them to 3 or 4 jaw chucks because of the innate accuracy. Some 3 jaw chucks are "acceptable" in the price range of the Beall, but there's always more runout than many folks want to deal with. The other advantage is repeatability - if you move the rod stock in a collet chuck, it's far more likely you'll end up dead nuts when you tighten it down again.

Recently I found a seller on eBay selling oversized ER32 collets, and it has been a serious game changer. Most of you know that vulcanite rod stock comes in a slew of sizes, but you can only hold anything up to 3/4" in standard ER32 collets. The oversized collets come in sizes up to 1-1/32" (26mm), and should cover the vast majority of rod stock you'll be using.

If you have a Beall collet chuck, definitely give these a look.

Link to Beall chuck:
http://www.bealltool.com/products/turni ... tchuck.php

Link to eBay seller (no affiliation):
https://www.ebay.com/sch/blacoun/m.html ... 7675.l2562

Pic for attention:

The beall collet chuck was one of the best additions to my shop. Thanks for the recommendation Kurt!

It's a shame those collets weren't around when I set up my collet chuck. I ended up going for ER40 as at the time 19mm was the biggest I could get and my main rod stock comes in at just under 21mm.

In the long run I suppose the ER40 has been better, I have capacity up to 30mm which I do make use of quite often, but ER32 would have cost a fraction to buy and I would have been able to get a ready made chuck rather than building up my own from parts.

I’ve thought about getting a collet chuck many times. Thanks for sharing the link to this one with recommendation.


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I set up my DP with a collet chuck. They're magic. Couldn't do what I do without it.