Collet chuck comparison with good news for Shopsmith owners.
Collets or collet chucks are an excellent way to hold small pieces and with good tools the work can be removed from the collet and reinstalled with little loss of concentricity. The split wire chuck was developed by US watch manufactures in the mid-19th century and is quite accurate but requires the work piece to fit the collet very closely. If the object to be turned is of a larger diameter or more than a few thousands smaller than the collet ID then the collet can be damaged and accuracy suffers.So as result, you need a bunch of them. This set is in increments of 1/64” (0.016”) in an ideal world with an unlimited tool budget I would also have the metric set with increments of 0...
