I kinda went nuts a while back on drill chucks. But I had gotten REALLY tired of spot drill, small drill, big drill, ream, repeat, repeat, repeat....
I looked and looked over a few months and couldn’t find what I thought was a decent deal on a used “as new” chuck for my mill and also wanted some good chucks for lathe and press. Finally bought the Rohm 1/2 from Enco’s sale catalog and mounted it on an R8. Wonderful chuck in every way and very happy, but still wanted something for larger and smaller shanks. Then I found an 18N “never mounted and as new other than shelf storage induced patina”. Got it for $75 and it turned out to be perfect needing only a little love with a Scotch-Brite pad. Figured that was good enough till I could find some smoking deals. Next thing I know, cheap chucks are everywhere I turn. Almost so bad I can’t go to a public restroom without finding a Albrecht in the trash can. I’ve now got something like 4 near perfect Albrecht 1/2 chucks (2 on 1” shanks for my turret, 1 with MT2 in my press, and one MT3 for my lathe), and 3 more 3/8” Albrecht chucks to go through some day (one needs cleaning but otherwise good, one perfect shell with spun jaws, and a rusty shell with perfect jaws for a donor), 2 more 1/4" Albrechts (one on R8, the other not mounted) and even a 1/8” Albrecht currently unmounted. I think I’ve got less than $80 in all of them. Not to mention the 2 14Ns (1 old straight shell on MT2, and one bulb shell on 3/4 straight) and 2 more 18Ns (one has found life as a dedicated spindle mounted chuck on my ongoing grinder project, used for quick mounting various arbors for flap disks and the like). And as suggested, these SuperChucks can run reversed.
Like I said, it got out of hand, but I couldn’t see passing given the prices I was finding. Once I get them all fixed/restored and mounted on appropriate arbors, I’ll be set for quick changes between chucks with all sorts of mounted bits including a “sensitive” mount on the 1/8” Albrecht chuck.
So what’s my point? Mainly that the Rohm 1/2 chuck for ~$55 in the Enco catalog is hard to beat for a quick fix. But used is out there for a good price if you can wait. And most of my current crop of chucks have VERY little runout with the exception of a couple with spun jaws (that were bought for scrap price, so what the heck).