# Making soft jaws for a lathe chuck



## zeeprogrammer (Aug 29, 2009)

Nice educational and detailed post. Thanks.


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## kvom (Aug 31, 2009)

The first time I used soft jaws was on the lathe at school, where they milled the aluminum softjaws via CNC. Here's an image after the pocket was bored:







You need to clamp a round "slug" before boring to keep the jaws from moving. Here's the flywheel blank clamped in the pocket:






This morning I tooks advice and milled the angles on the soft jaw faces. The hard jaws had an angle less than 60 degrees, but I just used the 60 degree angle plate to set the jaws in the vise:






With all three jaws milled and remounted:






The faces of the soft jaws are now even with the faces of the lower hard jaw, making it easier to position the slug before boring.


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