Combination Lathe Chucks: Westcott or Wescott?

By popular demand (sorta), I am starting a thread to examine combination lathe chucks with jaws that are both universal (all move together when the key is turned) and independent (each jaw is moved separately).

The oldest chucks of this type that I have seen were invented by John H. Westcott of Oneida, NY in the late 19th century. I have seen a few of these, but never bought one. They looked more like museum pieces than something I would actually use and most were too big for my lathes. I never saw one of those chucks that still had the special wrenches with it. Westcott did not use a pinion gear to rotate the ring gear or scroll. The back of the ring gear or scroll had some blind holes and you needed a special wrench to adjust it.

Here is a Westcott company history:
Westcott Chuck Co. - History | VintageMachinery.org

And here is a list of Westcott patents:
Westcott Chuck Co. - Assigned Patents | VintageMachinery.org

Here is the 1873 Westcott combination chuck patent:
Patent Images

I have a couple of Skinner combination chucks, so Westcott did have competition in this area. To get their patent, of course Skinner had to find a completely different way of getting the same result as Westcott. I am not happy with the way the Skinner chucks operate, but they are about 100 years old, so maybe they were nicer when new. You can recognize one by the sliding knurled nut on the back of the chuck. They use a female square key. I have not researched all the Skinner patents, but I do know that Skinner was awarded two patents for two-piece reversible chuck jaws in 1891. I don't know if that was the first such jaw design for a heavy duty chuck. But American Watch Tool Co. had a watch lathe 3-jaw chuck design with 1881 patent dates that had two-piece non-reversible jaws.

Here is a Skinner ad from 1912 for their combination chuck that shows their patented jaw design:
Skinner Chuck Co. - 1912 ad - Skinner combination chucks | VintageMachinery.org

Here is the 1882 Skinner combination chuck patent"
Patent Images

Anyone know of another American combination chuck, new or old?

To be continued with modern European combination chucks.

Larry

In other posts, I said that the European combination chucks were known as "System Westcott." I saw that as a nod to the American Westcott Chuck Co. that made the original combination chucks. I was wrong, but I don't know how wrong. I have two NOS German combination chucks by Arowa and Buderus that say, "System Wescott" on the box labels. The Bison online catalog list many different "Combination Chucks (Wescott)." So now I have wonder if the Europeans simply got the spelling wrong or if there was a company somewhere, sometime called Wescott.

I have a Swiss 6 1/4" 4-jaw combination chuck by Reischauer that is mounted on an L00 adapter for my Clausing lathe. It is finely made and a joy to use, but I only use it for cutting eccentric cams on round bar. I set the jaws offset as needed for the job and then use the universal scroll to quickly clamp and unclamp the blanks. I make these parts in batches and the chuck makes it a quick job. I got this chuck without the box, so I don't know if Reischauer called it a Wescott chuck.

My German and Swiss chucks have jaws like those in Westcott's 1907 patent. Each jaw is made in two parts separated by an adjusting screw. The bottom half engages the scroll and the top half can be removed and reversed. The European chucks need two different size male square end keys.

Here are pictures of the Reischauer chuck.

Next, the German chucks.

Larry

"To be continued with modern European combination chucks."

interrupted by a side-trip as to how and why these critters "just may have" gotten their start.

I wasn't "in the room". I didn't yet even have spies employed.

Even so, before there were harder-to-make "scroll" or "face thread' chucks, there were pinions ganged by a ring bevel gear, each with its own sort-of-synchronized jack screw. "Sort of" due to the crude nature and substantial backlash involved, not in the screws, but rather in the pinion and ring gear connecting them.

An adjustable top-jaw stacked onto these to compensate was probably identified as a Very Good Idea, even before there was a need to grasp off-center or oddly shaped parts repeatably, one open-close-open cycle after another..

Major adjustment at initial setup. Minor or NO adjustment between parts born of the same Mother. Castings, for example.

The Arowa 3-jaw combination chuck is 125 mm or 5" and the box label says "System Wescott." I have wanted to mount the Arowa chuck on a Hardinge taper back for decades, but those C24 taper mount 5" fixture plates are always too expensive or just not available.*

The Buderus 3-jaw combination chuck is 165 mm or 6 1/4" and the box label says "System Wescott."

Here are pictures of the Arowa chuck.

Larry

* This just in (Post #6): http://www.practicalmachinist.com/v...ource-hardinge-no-5-taper-nose-blanks-338874/

The C24 5" fixture mount is still available from Hardinge (for $397), but is not in their online catalog. Too expensive for my purpose, so the Arowa chuck remains in the box.

Here are pictures of the Buderus chuck. I actually have two of them. Someone who speaks engineering German can translate the label where I think it says the chuck body is cast Perlit.

Larry

Larry:


High power (duty ?) and accuracy lathe chuck

with 3 jaws, body cast from perlite.

Type WG 3, 165 mm diameter

Steelworks of Rochling Buderus, AG (aktien gesellschaft = stock business or something like it).

Interesting note: Rochling held patents on some induction melting furnaces for making alloy steels in the 'teens and 'twenties. Buderus is a name that most often is associated in this country with high efficiency heating equipment.

Joe Michaels said:

Larry:


High power (duty ?) and accuracy lathe chuck

with 3 jaws, body cast from perlite.

Type WG 3, 165 mm diameter

Steelworks of Rochling Buderus, AG (aktien gesellschaft = stock business or something like it).

Interesting note: Rochling held patents on some induction melting furnaces for making alloy steels in the 'teens and 'twenties. Buderus is a name that most often is associated in this country with high efficiency heating equipment.

Click to expand...

OK, I got that, but what is Perlit in the engineering German sense, translated to engineering English? Google suggested the perlite translation to English, but that is a mineral used in potting soil, not a form of iron or steel. Pearlite is a transformation product (ferrite plus cementite in laminar form) formed during heat treatment of high carbon steel or cast iron, so that must be a clue. So I am guessing they meant either the "semi-steel" that is sometimes quoted in chuck catalogs, or maybe they meant heat treated cast steel. I don't want to go filing, scraping or sparking on a new chuck, and it would need a better test anyway.

Here is a very detailed company history. It really was founded in 1731, but I did not see any mention of making chucks, and they certainly don't make them now.
http://www.fundinguniverse.com/company-histories/buderus-ag-history/

Larry

L Vanice said:

OK, I got that, but what is Perlit in the engineering German sense, translated to engineering English? Google suggested the perlite translation to English, but that is a mineral used in potting soil, not a form of iron or steel. Pearlite is a transformation product (ferrite plus cementite in laminar form) formed during heat treatment of high carbon steel or cast iron, so that must be a clue.

Click to expand...

Far more than a clue. Other way 'round. Direct translation, Scientific German to English the more likely.

Pearlitic = Perlitisch. Pearlite = Perlit, going the other direction, present-day.

The fruit one can eat has a different name. Well... it CAN have.

Time was, Engineering, Metallurgy, Chemistry, and Physics Majors in the USA had to take the course(s) and know Scientific German, so much work had been published in it, so many terms had been novated in the course of that work, then become the Rosetta stone amongst many other languages more casual.

English has enough German roots that we see most of it as spelling or secondary, tertiary use words we already have, and not a big deal.

Chinese need it so badly Longmanns publish a special dictionery, German, English, Chinese technical terms ONLY. Used to be one of my favourite executive gift handouts.

The Chinese HAVE the terms, but only a few ever use their own rather than learning a Western language. They gain face when they do not have to do that, internally.

Side comment - I have a modern Bison combo chuck, and for holding things really tight, I find that I have to tighten the individual jaws with their individual screws - the scroll doesn't quite get it tight enough.

Somewhat sloppy chuck? (But Bison seems decent to me...)

Operator error? (Easily possible...)

Also, I use it on a milling machine machine, and am generally tightening as much as I can without springing the chuck. Is lathe service somehow easier?

[It's not disappointing to me, because I viewed the combo scroll as just a way to get setups to be faster anyway...]

I wonder when the first combo chuck with scroll (as opposed to ring of pinons or the like) appeared? When did scroll chucks appear?

bryan_machine said:

Side comment - I have a modern Bison combo chuck, and for holding things really tight, I find that I have to tighten the individual jaws with their individual screws - the scroll doesn't quite get it tight enough.

Somewhat sloppy chuck? (But Bison seems decent to me...)

Operator error? (Easily possible...)

Also, I use it on a milling machine machine, and am generally tightening as much as I can without springing the chuck. Is lathe service somehow easier?

[It's not disappointing to me, because I viewed the combo scroll as just a way to get setups to be faster anyway...]

I wonder when the first combo chuck with scroll (as opposed to ring of pinons or the like) appeared? When did scroll chucks appear?

Click to expand...

Most of it happened in a small zone of New England, and some of the inventor's families intermarried. "Cross fertilization", over kitchen tables a well as feather beds, one supposes.

One may find more of that by searching local news of the era than chuck-maker online history, as they are long-gone as companies, now. The obits and wedding announcements, the town pride in what was made where, news snippets that told of a family's accomplishments when a building burned down for the second time and was rebuilt, larger, yet survive.

Tedious task, reading those, even when interesting, and even for Mark One, Type 1, Standard "A", packrat minds. Can't comment on how "normal" folks might view such exercises. Not sure I even know any such, up close. Folk just don't READ the way they used to do. "For keeps", not kleenex.

bryan_machine said:

Side comment - I have a modern Bison combo chuck, and for holding things really tight, I find that I have to tighten the individual jaws with their individual screws - the scroll doesn't quite get it tight enough.

Somewhat sloppy chuck? (But Bison seems decent to me...)

Operator error? (Easily possible...)

Also, I use it on a milling machine machine, and am generally tightening as much as I can without springing the chuck. Is lathe service somehow easier?

[It's not disappointing to me, because I viewed the combo scroll as just a way to get setups to be faster anyway...]

I wonder when the first combo chuck with scroll (as opposed to ring of pinons or the like) appeared? When did scroll chucks appear?

Click to expand...

Is your Bison a 3-jaw or a 4-jaw? A 3-jaw will always exert equal force from each jaw on a round or hex bar. A 4-jaw will exert equal force from two opposed jaws and the other two jaws may be more or less loose, whether on round, 4-sided or hex stock.

Westcott's 1873 patent has a scroll and mentions that other existing chucks have scrolls, but his invention adds the independently adjusted jaws to the existing design.

Larry

L Vanice said:

Westcott's 1873 patent has a scroll and mentions that other existing chucks have scrolls, but his invention adds the independently adjusted jaws to the existing design.

Click to expand...

Not to forget, bespoke "faceplate tooling", some of it using hardwoods and blacksmithed iron, forge as close as the other end of the same machine hall, had been common before chucks as a tribe had been made into a "product" rather than many and several individual craftsman's one-off solutions. Lathes relied on turning 'tween centers more often than they have since. It took centuries to get where we were by 1900 or so as to "general purpose" workholding. Many of the goods we take for granted as bedrock minimum needfuls were dear and hard to afford "bleeding edge high tech" in their early days.

Folk would "find a way" to ADD a means to mount 'tween centers on some of the unlikeliest of objects, rather. Had to do.

Not a bad set of tricks to remember, either, some of those.

Annnd we do still need to get a 4-J "self centering" + Wescott under the camera and into the mix, here.

Anyone?

A 6-jaw would be nice, too, but if I knew who made one, I'd probably already own one.

the chuck i was speaking of is a 4 jaw combi

Here are some pics of my 1917-ish (maybe) Union Mfg 4 jaw combination chuck. It uses bevel gears on each adjusting screw and a large mating ring gear to work the jaws together. Very flimsy and difficult to get set up.

Patrick H said:

Here are some pics of my 1917-ish (maybe) Union Mfg 4 jaw combination chuck. It uses bevel gears on each adjusting screw and a large mating ring gear to work the jaws together. Very flimsy and difficult to get set up.View attachment 206616View attachment 206617View attachment 206619

Click to expand...

That looks exactly like the Skinner combination chucks. Skinner Chuck Co. and Union Mfg. Co. were both in New Britain, CT, so perhaps there was a merger or shared patent. I think Cushman ended up buying Union.

Here is a list of Skinner patents. The first one (1882) shows the combination chuck with the knurled nut on the back to engage the ring gear.
Skinner Chuck Co. - Assigned Patents | VintageMachinery.org

Larry

Cushman, of Hartford, CT, is an old American chuck maker, still in business after some ownership changes.

Here is the Cushman history, claiming their founder's father-in-law, Simon Fairman, patented the first manual lathe chuck in 1830. I have not found that patent.
Cushman | Home

Here is a list of some Cushman patents. The first one on the list was issued to George Fairman of Rochester, NY, maybe a relative of Simon Fairman, in 1869. But I see no other indication of a connection to Cushman for this patent. This patent is for a combination chuck, the earliest design I have come across so far.
Cushman Chuck Co. - Assigned Patents | VintageMachinery.org

Larry

Westcott Chuck, need to find the chuck wrench/key rather than a wrench and a socket.


John

I have a westscott 4 jaw 12" with the Male square studs also. I have no chuck wrench or key for it. What would you recommend?

Well first you have to measure across the flats and get the actual dimension there.

I have two 4-jaw combination chucks. A 16" Westcott and a 12" no name. Both appear to have seen little use and have very little wear if any. The 16" is set up for my 20" lathe and I have used it from time to time.

I recall the 12" being used on an 18" B&E for a while that my dad had back in the 1970's. It is not currently set up to be used on any of my lathes. Been sitting on the shelf for a while.