A chuck question

[J Lilley]

The Hurricane chucks are as good as any out there and the pricing is great. I have had the HTC100 for about 3 or 4 years and just purchased the HTC 125 and it is an impressive chuck.

[MichaelMouse]

I am going to be upgrading to a better chuck.  Currently use the cheapie grizzly chuck with Tommy bars.  They don't  always hold.  So,I am considering  several different chucks, the prices vary.  I'm  looking at the better grizzly chuck, the Nova sn-2, record , or the sorby patriot.  I dont need a lot of grizzly bashing.  I need feed back from the owners of these chucks, on thier performance,  reliability etc.  Thanks guys

Bill

Sad to hear of your trouble.  I have had the original Nova with Tommy bars for 25 years or so, and still use it, along with my SNs.  Back to the idea that a wedge need not be "gripping", and if you are trying to do so, you're defeating yourself.  Make a shouldered wedged tenon or mortise, where the bottom is its shoulder, and don't reef on the Tommy bars.  

I'm in the chorus for Novas, as you can tell.

[AHill]

What is your current lathe and what is its capacity?  You'll want a chuck that will work with your lathe as far as capacity goes.  I have both Oneway Talon and Teknatool Supernova 2 chucks.  The Talon is better quality, but the SN2 does everything I need it to do.  One advantage of the Teknatool (Nova) chucks is that almost every set of jaws they sell are interchangeable between all their different chucks, so if you upgrade to a larger chuck, you won't need to spend a fortune on new jaws.  Another advantage of the SN2 is that you can purchase kits that retrofit your chuck to allow quick change jaws.

You may consider Hartville Tools as a source to buy from.  They offer a 15% discount to WN members and they sell Oneway chucks.  Novas tend to also go on sale from time-to-time.  Oneway is made in Canada.  Nova now manufactures their stuff in China.