How Many Chucks Would A Woodchuck Chuck?

If I dig into my stash I can probably find as many different chucks.

It seems like every new tool I find has its own style an size.

Clearly the price of brass is down.

Hi Dave,

Probably the mini is a still a nice size for home use. Also more future-proofed for needs I guess. For the milling machine I didn't go for the smallest, and am glad now, even though sometimes I wish I had an even larger one, I can make do with the one I have, whereas the micro would have been very restrictive.

I have a custom DIY table, although they do sell tables for the machines, they are very basic and too small to leave a few tools nearby, I don't think it is worth buying them. We used chunky (maybe 100x100mm) fence posts from B&Q for table legs, and a thick wood base (and then there is the oil pan and then the machine), and the tabletop size is perhaps 700x700 (I've not checked) which is still compact, but allows me to leave the correct spanners and keys and oil and coolant bottles and a couple of large plastic component buckets with clamps and misc stuff,  all on the surface within easy reach.

I think Arc Euro Trade do the stripping/rebuilding of anything that needs it to make it immediately ready to use, built-in to their prices. My milling machine was a Sieg one too, and needed no work (apart from a bit of cleaning of grease off surfaces and then replace with some oil).

They appear to have discontinued the micro lathes from their line up.  
I might have to consider upsizing to a mini lathe instead.

The mini appears to give a lot more flexibility over the micro, my main concern is the increase in weight.

A lot of the mini / micro lathes appear to be rebadged versions of the Chinese Sieg models. However I believe that one of the first tasks tends to be to strip it down, replace various parts and then rebuild it in order to improve the accuracy/reliability.

dougw Great question.

My favorite chuck is similar to the third one you showed.  I like using it for starter holes.  Power off, but manual on/in.  I can ruin stuff really fast with a powered tool.

My "go to" knife is the slightly larger exacto knife with a metal handle (maybe a cm in diameter).  After that, I go for my pocket knife.

I only have the standard small crafting glue gun, but I have a stack of index cards that I use as disposable place mats.  I also have a small bench with a slot in that holds the glue gun upside-down for when I'm letting it cool or not using it.  The index cards and the inverted stand... worth having.

Finally, you have a few taps.  My tap set is from Harbor Freight.  It's fine for plastic.  It rarely survives metal.  My kit is slowly getting upgraded - one broken tap at a time.  I also managed to break the tap handle.  Again, slow upgrades.  I have looked seriously at mini lathes and milling machines, but fine work is not in my repertoire right now.

It's worth checking out Arc Euro Trade for such tools, I didn't buy a lathe, but purchased my manual milling machine from there. It's been reliable for close to a decade (although I'm no power user of it, I do use it frequently). Their machines are Chinese, and they check them (and I believe UK-ize them in terms of electricals etc).