Chuck shopping

[AlfromNH]

I'm looking at 4-jaw chucks for my Chinese 1340 lathe, D1-4 mount.

There's this(Chinese), from Shars. ~$250 delivered to me.

8" D1-4 4 Jaw Independent Lathe Chuck

www.shars.com

And this(Taiwanese), from PM. ~$500 delivered to me.(doesn't specify that it's independent jaws)

8″ High Precision 4 Jaw Lathe Chuck, D1-4 Mount – Precision Matthews Machinery Co.

www.precisionmatthews.com

Obviously the PM one from Taiwan is better quality, but is it worth twice the price? What are the downsides to a lesser quality chuck?

 

[mksj]

Go with the better quality one, I often find the fitment of the Jaws are poor on the less expensive Chinese chucks and there can be issues with how they are ground resulting in more skew when holding stock. The other issue I had (the Chinese 4J independent that came with my 1340 lathe) was it was so out of balance I couldn't get the chuck past 400 RPM. I have the the PM 4J noted above, and it smooth running, chuck casting is much better and mine has balance weights on the inside. There have been a few (1-2) isolated reports of the chuck not mounting completely down on the spindle, but it may be the lathe or slight difference chuck to chuck or spindle mounts.

If you plan to use soft jaws, then you want to look at chucks with 2 piece jaws.

Precision Mathews 4J independent, off center boring and threading.

 

[AlfromNH]

Thanks, I hadn't considered the 2-piece jaws aspect...

 

[Shotgun]

The other issue I had (the Chinese 4J independent that came with my 1340 lathe) was it was so out of balance I couldn't get the chuck past 400 RPM.

I noticed my Sebastian shaking the other day with a piece of round stock in the 3-jaw. Hadn't ever run the 3-jaw that fast, and had not considered that the chuck might be out of balance, but now I'm thinking that might be the issue.

How do you even build a chuck in a way to do that?