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The SC series is a range of premium chucks and jaws for the serious or professional woodturner. Developed through consultation with hobby users, professional woodturners and specialist woodturning retailers, we have designed what we believe is the most flexible and best value system available.
When there are so many similar looking chucks available - what really constitutes a premium chuck? When looking at chucks online, it is often impossible to gauge the quality of manufacture through the information, photographs and even video available. Even when holding a budget chuck in your hands, its faults can often be difficult to see - until it is taken apart and inspected more closely.
What should you look for when buying a chuck?
One of the first considerations is the jaw range available – does it cover all your likely application needs? We spent a lot of time in consultation with professional turners, demonstrators, keen enthusiasts and specialist retailers when developing our jaw range. We tried to ensure that we covered as wide a range of applications as we could but with the minimum number of jaws, to reduce cost of ownership, make jaw selection as easy as possible and reduce the overlap, duplication and dubious designs found in many other ranges.
Does Your Prospective Brand or Manufacturer Have Confidence in Their Product?
Whilst there is no standardisation in jaw mounts, we use the same jaw mount profile and hole positions as Nova and Sorby, so that their jaws can be mounted on our chucks and our jaws can be mounted on theirs. At least as far as Record Power are concerned - all our chucks and jaws are CNC-machined to a high quality standard and we will honour the guarantee for our own components even when used with a competing brand, as long as the mount is compatible. So, for example, if a chuck should fail with a compatible competitor’s jaw - we would honour the guarantee for our chuck component. Or should one of our jaws fail on a compatible competitor’s chuck - we would honour the guarantee for our jaw component. Of course, we would not guarantee the competitor’s component should that fail.
The Devil Is in the Detail...
Consistent accuracy of manufacture is critical to a premium chuck. This involves significant investment in tooling, as well as engineering expertise and stringent quality control - factors which are missing from the manufacture of the many cheap copies of tried-and- trusted designs. When you take a closer look at the components, you can see huge differences in quality, which greatly affects reliability.
Jaw slides are probably the most critical components in a chuck. The tolerance between jaw slide and slideway and the jaw slide and scroll ring will determine how much play there is in the jaw movement. Some brands promote a loose fit and one-handed operation as a benefit - but this often masks poor tolerance control. You want as tight a movement as possible for accuracy, security of grip and longevity of parts - but not so tight it is uncomfortable to use. We believe all our chucks have found the sweet spot.
Jaw slides are where you mount your jaws to the chuck - so it is essential that mount locations are consistent, accurate and well supported because lathes can be turning at several thousand revolutions per minute and there needs to be no risk that a jaw could come loose or fail to grip work adequately.
Record Power Jaw Slides
Our jaw slides are some of the widest available, to maximise strength and support. They are also made using a repeatable and consistent sintering process.Below are some comparisons against cheap generic copies that are only evident if you strip the chucks down to their component parts.You can not only see the difference in size and support offered - you can also clearly see the difference inquality and definition of the parts.
We have designed the SC series to be safe and intuitive to use. The scroll design ensures the chucks operate with the familiar action of clockwise to close and anti-clockwise to open whereas some competitors’ chucks work in the opposite direction. The scroll ring mates with the machined underside of the jaw carriers and transfers the rotational movement of the chuck key to open and close the jaws. It is essential in premium chucks that these are manufactured accurately.
Some of our chucks have a direct key connection to the scroll ring and the SC4 uses a pinion to engage with the scroll. The addition of a pinion to the SC4 is to accommodate users who prefer a hex key to drive the chuck when access is limited by the workpiece. Some users prefer the positive feel of a direct key and others prefer a hex key, so we have made sure to offer both options. Pinions are on the higher-priced version because this solution costs more – there are more components, more machining and a bigger body to accommodate them. Whether you are looking at a key or a pinion – be aware again of the hidden quality that is only evident when taking the chuck apart:
Now we have looked in detail at premium versus generic copies, we hope some of the shortcomings are easy to see and understand. What may look like a bargain on a web or catalogue page - with products looking very similar on the face of it to a premium branded chuck - can hide a multitude of potentially dangerous weaknesses. The bad machining of critical parts and the use of poor quality materials on such copies not only makes it likely the chuck will be frustrating and inconsistent to use; it can be a serious safety issue when the parts fixing jaws to slides are compromised as these can be rotating at several thousand revolutions per minute for some applications.
When you then consider the difference in price between our chucks and even the cheapest generic copies on the market – we believe our chucks are the real bargain and deliver genuine value-for-money.
First, which jaws are available for the chuck and whether the range covers your needs. The essential mechanisms — the jaw slides, the scroll ring and the chuck key — are hidden inside and do not show in a photograph.
Poor machining in critical parts and weak material give uneven performance. If a jaw mounting fails, a heavy piece of wood is spinning in the lathe at up to 3,500 revolutions per minute.
The quality of the manufacturing process does not show from the outside. The differences lie in the machining of the jaw slides, in the scroll ring and in the quality of the material.
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