NOVA 6021 Soft Wood Lathe Chuck Jaw Set

yep, it does fit on my grizzly chuck, which i have several vicmarc vm100 jaws for that also fit perfectly.like others have said, there's not a ton of material under the screws when you mount it. but, i've had no issues with that, and already have it turned for 2 small bowls i'm working on -- it turned very easily with carbide tools. i just went slow and it worked great.already ordered a few more sets!

I bought this set of jaws (and a Nova G3 chuck and insert) because I do lots of small turned boxes and wanted a simpler solution for cleaning up the base of some of them, and also fitting lids and such.I made a set from some UHMW plastic I had on hand and it went okay but was a huge hassle tapping them out to fit the chucks I had and so I decided to go this route and am glad I did. Making a set of stepped jaws is a snap:I put the jaws on the chuck, closed them up all the way and turned a set of dovetail mortises into the material using both a 1/8" Thompson parting tool and a skew, then a deburring tool to clean up the screw holes. That's it. Total time? Less than 10 minutes (picture below).I find that the material is stiff enough to hold the work piece securely but pliable enough that it won't mark the work. Even work that has already been finished. For example, the little segmented piece in the photos below was turned and finished with Shellawax on the lathe. I reversed mounted it in these jaws to clean up the base just to see what effect this had on the finish. No effect at all.I ran the lathe up to about 3200 rpm with the piece secured and turned off the excess from the base and it was stable and no issues at that speed so I'm pretty happy overall.One reviewer commented that there wasn't much meat on them to attach to the chuck and, while this is true, you really don't need a whole lot of material I don't think. At least I haven't had an issue so far. Partly because I'm only using these jaws for small objects, there isn't much load, so I can't comment on larger pieces.Another commented that he couldn't make stepped jaws but I found this to be dead easy. In fact, I already ordered another set and turned 3 steps in that set. I just wanted to use these a bit before reviewing.If you already have a Nova chuck, these are a no-brainer. If you don't it's worth every penny to buy one just for the pleasure of using these jaws. Seriously.

Here's the key point: these jaws are made 100% out of nylon. Nylon is about as easy to work as wood (need to use lower RPM's to reduce heat to minimize melting). The size of these jaws work perfect on the Barracuda 2; the pre-drilled mounting holes worked fine for me without modification. The key difference between the Nova designed jaws and the PSI jaws is in the footprint: Nova's have a circular slot on the chuck that mates with a circular key on the jaws which are then locked in place by two screws; PSI's have a circular KEY on the chuck and a matching circular slot on the jaws with two screws for locking also (see picture provided of black PSI jaw with circular slot for example)....so yes, you read that correctly....the two have basically an inverse design...one has a slot where the other one has a key. If these jaws were made out of metal it would be harder to modify them to fit but since they are made out of nylon it took me maybe 30 minutes extra to sand down the key flat on each of these jaws and then use a dremel tool to create a matching circular slot on the jaws that lines up with the circular key on the PSI chuck. I ground in the slot and used the same holes to insert my screws and everything fit perfect!I then, like many others, used a parting tool and gouge to cut in two additional levels into the nylon jaws while turning them on my lathe...this gives me three holding points: small (using the the original inner edge), medium (newly cut) and large (newly cut). I also cut the steps with a slight negative taper to increase holding strength in the two newly created edges (like the taper you typically add to a tenon)...I did all this with the jaws mounted in the chuck on my lathe. I hope some of the pictures above make this all clearer....unfortunately, I don't have a picture of the back of the nylon jaw before I started my fitment modifications to work on the Barracuda 2 chuck.

I just made a deeply undercut oval cross section vase with only a 2 3/8" opening. It turned out really well but when came time to turn it over and finish the bottom, I found out my NOVA chuck wouldn't go that small. Oops! I bought a set of these, turned them down to the appropriate size in about 10 minutes, and they worked absolutely perfectly. The rim around the opening of the vase is less than 1/8" thick, but by cutting the soft chuck pieces to the exact size, the internal pressure was evenly distributed on the rim - an added benefit. And I only used half the available thickness of the soft chuck for this project, so will be able step cut it and use it for a larger project later.The instructions recommend a flat face tool for turning the nylon. This didn't work well with either carbide or steel, so I used my diamond point carbide for the rough work, then squared things up with the flat faced tool. Much better!

Used on a busy bee chuck fit perfectly , Just had to shorten the screws a couple of threads

This product was used to increase production efficiency to my end -product

They call these soft nylon, and I was expecting closer to rubber then metal. I mean these are definitely better then metal but they are still hard plastic.

Terrific customization item if you are making many similarly shaped objects.Also great for holding bowls internally when you want to sand and polish their bases (knife tools need to be super sharp for this)

Excellent product and supplier