Lathe chuck in fire

GL

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Aug 13, 2017
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I have a 4 jaw chuck that was on a lathe in a burning shop. The fire department helped with heat treating by quenching the whole thing. Apparently, the bed fell apart as they tried to pull it from the charred pile. The chuck is intact, a bit rusty
, but in one piece so far. I've seen "flame hardened ways", I'm thinking this is different. I'm also thinking if I put any stress on it it will fall apart also. Can you anneal cast iron? How hot do you go and for how long? I have a kiln I can use as an oven and slow cool down. I know some about steel heat treating, cast not so much.
 
Just my 2 cents but I wouldn't want to be standing next to that chuck while spinning on a lathe. I'm no metallurgist but not knowing the integrity of that chuck scares me.
 
I was thinking rotary table for a friend, but I actually like the guy so wondered if was even salvageable. I guess if I can tighten it down on something and it doesn't blow up, it would be good enough for that. I agree, spooling it up on a lathe sounds like a bad idea. The only saving Grace would be that if the metal moved during the "quench" it is a four jaw, except for that parallelism thing. I actually suspect it isn't worth the effort and the scrap bin would keep it off of a lathe of someone down the line who has no idea they really have a bomb.
 
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