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2025/06/12 - Guild Meeting - Building a Homemade Chuck with Jim Duxbury

Building a Homemade Chuck with Jim Duxbury
  • Thursday June 12th
  • Hybrid: Live at NCSU Crafts Center and by IRD Broadcast via Zoom
  • Zoom call opens a 6:15 for socializing
  • Meeting begins at 6:45 PM
  • Demonstration begins at 7 PM

Bet you're thinking this is a woodturner’s 35mm camera.  Well, it may look a little like one but it's really a Duxbury eccentric wooden chuck. Why not? Duxbury has always been a little off center.  And besides it can’t be a camera -- where wood you get a roll of wooden film?

There are many versions of eccentric chucks available for a wood lathe. Usually they are made of steel or aluminum and range in cost from under a hundred dollars to many hundreds of dollars. Each one has its advantages and the complex ones are almost a science in themselves to use. Generally they are not intuitive for most woodturners.

So, Jim created the Duxbury Wooden Chuck --- now nicknamed the Dux Chuck. It is totally intuitive to use, simple to make, stimulates creativity, and the price is right. In fact all of the material needed to make a real Duxbury Chuck could probably be resurrected from your scrap wood pile. What are we waiting for? Creativity abounds. 


The material should be straight grained hardwood. Poplar was used for this chuck but maple, cherry, oak and other hardwoods would work fine also. I have designed this chuck to work with a Oneway Talon chuck using #2 jaws. Slight modifications may need to be made to accommodate other brands of chucks. 

Jim has also made three different mandrels that fit into the chuck frame. One is a flat center, another a screw chuck, and lastly, a 3/8”-16 TPI bottle topper chuck. These frames can rotate to change the location of the pattern to be cut.  The mandrels are shown below on the left  and also some samples of some of the many designs that can be made are shown on the right.







About our Demonstrator:

Karl Koch lives in Wake County and has been using the lathe as a creative tool for about 10 years. A former resident of coastal NC, most of Karl’s wood for turning came from hurricane debris.

His turned pieces reflect a varied background in archaeology, still photography, film and video production, architecture, sculpture, and performance art. Much of his work is burned, textured, colored, and carved to appear worn and weathered.

Most pieces imply a history or narrative. Some are simply explorations into color, texture, and form or created to ask the question “What if?”

Karl can be found on Instagram as “karlkochwoodturner”.