# Fox FX4000 chucks - the new batch are different!



## tekno.mage (13 May 2009)

Last year a bought a Fox FX4000 chuck from Poolewood. It was astonisingly cheap at around £55 inc VAT & shipping, had an insert to fit my lathe and most importantly accepts Record Power RP4000 jaws (easily available at reasonably price from a local supplier).Since buying the chuck I have bought various sets of jaws for it and overall am very pleased with it. It needed a bit of fettling when it first arrived - the supplied jaws had lots of sharp unfinished edges that needed attention and the scroll mechanism was much improved by the addition of some decent grease, but that was only to be expected at the price.

Not long after getting the chuck I made some MDF bowl reversing jaws but soon realised that second chuck with these semi-permantly fitted would be a really good idea as they really are a bit of a fiddly nuisance to fit & remove. Of course, when I went back to Poolewood's website all the bargain chucks had gone and they were listed as out of stock.

I vaguely wondered about getting a Versachuck or genuine RP4000 as a second chuck, but the price put me off. However, last week Poolewood's website showed the FX4000 as back in stock (albeit a tenner more expensive than last year), so I ordered one and it arrived today.

I was a little disappointed to find that the second chuck is not quite identical to the first - it will serve the purpose I bought it for and the differences are more an irritant than a show-stopper, but it's a nuisance all the same.

Firstly, the insert and rear of the chuck are completely different. The original used a round rod fitting into a hole in the side of the insert for chuck removal which is easy enough to use. The new one has an insert with two flats on the side - which needs a 42mm narrow spanner (not supplied - but a round rod the same as came with the first chuck was!) Not owning a 42mm spanner, I had to resort to a mole-wrench for removal.

The insert is a different style & there is not enough room to drill a suitably sized hole in it to take the rod.

Needless to say the inserts are not interchangeable, despite the native thread of the two chucks being the same. The implication is that if I change my lathe in future I will probably have to find two different chuck inserts instead of two the same if the spindle size is different.

The new style insert also means the new chuck sticks out slightly further when fitted. 

Secondly, the screws that hold the jaws in place are slightly different - the new ones have very slightly wider diameter heads which means that they don't seat as well in the original jaws of the first chuck - which means remembering which screws go with which jaws.

Thirdly, although the jaws were numbered the jaw carriers on the second chuck were not (on the first one they are). I rectified this with some number punches. What's the point of numbering the jaws if the carriers aren't numbered?

On the plus side, I also bought a set of 8" bowl reversing jaws for the chuck - these were also very cheap at 25 quid. They are very nice indeed. They close down much smaller than my home made ones so should be suitable for reversing small items like pen pots and come with two sets of buttons one short and one long. However the screws supplied with the second chuck have heads slightly too large to fit these jaws - luckily, the screws that came with the first chuck do fit properly.

Sigh... How hard can it be to source correctly sized screws - or to machine the countersinks on the jaws so either will fit correctly - we are only talking fractions of a millimeter here.

The first FX4000 I bought came with a small instruction booklet - badly translated from the Chinese. I guess it was no real loss that the second one didn't come with instructions :? 

tekno.mage


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## Pip (14 May 2009)

T.M. 
Thanks for this, I was thinking of getting this chuck for my fox lathe, but am now having a re-think.
pip


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