Barracuda Chuck

[paulstenlund]

My daughter gave me an old 30's/40's lathe that someone gave her. I derusted it, painted, replaced the belt, checked and oiled the bearings(has oil cups)then produced a lot of round kindling and a few pieces good stuff. It is time to tell Santa what kind of lathe chuck to put in his bag for me. It has a shopsmith type 5/8" head stock. I was thinking PSI headstock spindle converter and a PSI Barracuda Lathe chuck. I have no experience with lathe chucks and any help or sugestions would be greatly appreciated.

Paul

[SteveR]

Hi Paul,
Keep in mind I am a newbie to turning, but I do have a shopsmith. I bought this one http://www.pennstateind.com/store/csc3000c.html during the last sale they had. It is the barracuda II unit. I ordered the shopsmith adaptor as well. So far I have been very pleased with it. I did have an issue with the hex head set screw holding tight for the SS adaptor arbor. I ended up going to Ace and getting a few replacements as it ended up being metric. I am still using the original replacement and it has held on nice and tight (prolly have a total of 24 hrs worth of heavy turning use with newbie catches and all). So maybe I got a poor quality one to begin with? This chuck has opened up a lot of turning capacity that I was not able to do before. All the jaws interchange nice and easy. It appears to be of good quality for the fit/finish/operability and beefy/solid to boot....again I have nothing to compare it to, but I would do it again.
HTH
Steve

[paulstenlund]

Thanks Steve, now the question is Barracuda or BarracudaII

Paul