For some applications, the only solution is a really tiny chuck.  If that sort of task features in your work, we have a couple of interesting products that should make your life easier and possibly, safer.  So all makers of doll's house furniture, mini boxes, needle cases, lace bobbins, pick-up sticks etc. can at last say that someone cares for their needs too.

The Acrol Midi Chuck was designed by the same folk who brought you the Microclene air filters and who, incidentally, for those with a history in Woodturning, also invented the old Robot chuck range - one of the stars of their day.  That's history however.  What we have here is a small chuck designed to make the turning, and especially repetitive turning, of small objects much less onerous.

The chuck is simple to tighten onto the workpiece, requiring a single hand grip on the knurled collar to tighten or loosen it.  (The tommy bar is primarily for convenience when fitting the chuck to and removing it from, the spindle).  The chuck is also bored right through so that on lathes with a hollow spindle (and that's most modern lathes) a length of feedstock timber can be incrementally fed through the spindle as work progresses.  The  Midi chuck is supplied with two sets of interchangeable jaws, one suitable for workpiece sizes from 4 mm to 10 mm diameter - or square (this is a four-jaw chuck so it hold squares easily) and a second set for workpieces from 10 mm to 16 mm diameter/square.

The back of the chuck body is directly threaded to screw onto the spindle and the chuck is available threaded for either M33x3.5mm; 1" x 8 tpi or 3/4" x 16 tpi, covering most popular current lathes.

Second up in our "small is beautiful" section (which lets me out!) is a product we have had in the store for some time and regarding which we have had excellent feedback, but we've never thought to add it to the website (neither beauty not brains in this seat, it seems!).

The MM50 is a miniature engineering chuck three jawed, self-centring and a scroll chuck just like a full size engineering chuck.  But it is just 50 millimetres in diameter!  To keep the size minimal, the chuck is operated by two miniature tommy bars.  The interesting feature is that the three stepped jaws are reversible to make the chuck functionally equivalent to a set of internal and external engineering jaws.  This means that the chuck will grip in both compression and expansion modes giving a wide range of workholding possibilities.  Being three-jawed, the chuck centres any circular work perfectly.  The minimum hold diameter is next to nothing - should we say 0.5 mm for the record?

"Ah-ha", I hear you cry, "but I'm a woodturner so I must use a four-jaw chuck" (perish the lack of thinking!).  OK, so along came the MM54, our next phase in development, which provides, in a similarly compact 50 mm diameter package, a four jaw self-centring micro-sized scroll chuck.  This version is supplied with two sets of jaws shaped, respectively, for internal and external workholding BUT these jaws are also reversible so you options are legion.  Please note that the jawsets are not interchangeable between the MM50 and MM54 - indeed, why should they be? (But someone is bound to ask!)  Operation is by Tommy bars - but note that the design of these, for MM50 and MM54, may not be as shown in the above illustration.

Mounting these chucks couldn't be easier, with a choice of methods available.  The rear face of the chucks are tapped M12 x 1 and will mount directly onto many small engineering lathes.  For we in the woodturning community we have had adaptors created with a choice of 1" x 8 tpi or 3/4" x 16 tpi rear tapping to suit the common woodturning lathe spindles.  The chucks are so small that it is not practical to create larger thread sizes than these.  However, where there's a will there's a way and the way we have created here is a choice of 1MT or 2MT arbors onto which the chuck can be directly screwed: simply assemble the chuck to the arbor, push it into the spindle throat of your lathe and you're up and away regardless of the spindle thread size on your lathe.  That way you can even mount them in the tailstock.

So, if small is beautiful, then here's beauty indeed!