Charnwood Viper 3 Chuck Review

Hi guys, welcome back to my shop. In this video we're going to compare between these two chuck systems. Over here we have the Nova G3, a chuck I've been using for the past three years, while here we have the Charnwood Viper 3 chuck system which I purchased in last year's U-KISS 2017. And I've been using this for a few projects lately and I think I've used it enough to have a few ideas and impressions about the quality of this chuck. In this chuck I'm using an adapter for my 1 inch by 8 TPI thread on my spindle and the same goes for this chuck. I'm using the same well it's not the same adapter it's an adapter that came with this chuck so but it is for the same size. For the basic comparison of sizes I've mounted both chucks with the standard jaws and just to gather a few numbers the Nova chuck at a minimum expansion 5.2 centimeters, the Charnwood chuck a minimum expansion it can hold five and a half centimeters or two inches and three-eighths so this is much smaller. Obviously the size of the lip itself is very very different it's four and a half millimeters or we're talking about three-eighths on three six three sixteenths on the Nova and the lip on this Charnwood is quite thick it's more like six and a half millimeters or I can see it's five sixteenths. The Charnwood chuck is a little bit wider let's see if I can get a decent measurement it is about nine centimeters and a half a little bit more 9.6 centimeters you're gonna have to forgive me if I'm not switching everything if I'm not translating everything to inches I'm gonna have the inches displayed on the screen and if we're talking about the width of the Nova we're talking about exactly eight centimeters and nine millimeters so almost nine centimeters this chuck is obviously a little bit wider and you can plainly see this with your naked eye for both of these chucks I need an adapter for my own spindle width which is one inch over 8 dpi the only problem is that while in this chuck in the Nova chuck there is a small set screw that sets the insert inside the chuck on the Viper 3 the Charnwood chuck there is absolutely nothing that holds the insert which means that every time that I try to take the chuck off my lathe I have to use two tools because it will simply thread itself off from the chuck and the insert will remain on the lathe it's quite annoying but you know it's not something that is going to really change the way we work it just means that you need an extra tool to take this off the lathe if you want to do it properly so let's see a little bit how large these can expand with the jaws themselves with the classic standard jaws and then we'll talk a little bit more about the accessories okay so we have these two chucks here in expansion and as you can see obviously the Charnwood chuck offers a wider range if the Nova G3 can expand on the inside diameter up to six centimeters and four millimeters you can see that I have a full half a centimeter more it's exactly seven centimeters with the Charnwood Viper 3. The G3 chuck that I bought three years ago came with the key and it came with the woodworm screw as you can see that fits inside here it nestles inside and it works perfectly well and I've used it on many many projects you can check some of them on my channel and it works perfectly well and here is one of the problems that I had with the Charnwood chuck because it also comes with this woodworm screw only I had a problem with the chuck because every time that I tried to fit this inside here it didn't fit it didn't close well it didn't hold the screw at all the screw was very loose and I had to investigate so let me take this apart and I'll show you what the problem was okay so initially when I bought this chuck it came with a different set of carriers these are the carriers for the jaws themselves where they connect with the screws so the original jaws or the original carriers that came with the chuck were these and as you can see these are a little bit filed off while the original that came with the chuck are pointy so when the carrier would close they supposed to grab onto this part here okay grab to on this part here but since they were all pointy it didn't allow for everything to close up properly over this part so it remained loose so I didn't know that at the beginning and I tried many things and eventually I contacted the Charnwood customer support and we came to the conclusion that I was sold this chuck with the original carriers instead of the modified carriers so that was absolutely perfect absolutely no problem they send me a new set of carriers which I'm using on the chuck at the moment only the problem was that they send me a double tooth instead of different tooth so they send me the one the two the three and another three or another two it was one of those instead of four different carriers and it's important because each carrier has a different track at the back so the chuck wasn't able to close properly with the different teeth so I contacted the Charnwood customer support again explained them the problem that they send me the wrong teeth and they said absolutely no problem and they shipped me again a different tooth to replace the missing one only the problem was that they they sent me the wrong tooth again so now I have three tooth of the same the same number and I was still missing the original number one tooth I think it was the one so at that point I told them okay listen guys this doesn't work and I'll just file away the tooth myself and give it this little indent which I did and they didn't contact me anymore after that after I told them to just leave it and that I'll do it myself they didn't send me any email saying okay or we're sorry or anything they just ignored me from that point on so a little bit I have to I have to say that the customer support were really responsive at the beginning and they sent me those two replacements very very quickly the only problem was that they send me the wrong parts so a little bit of an annoyance over there but obviously it is solved so what did I get with my viper 3 chuck I received an extra jaws standard jaws but they are serrated on the inside as opposed to these jaws that are not serrated I received a face plate which is very very nice I should probably keep it a little bit cleaner so that's a face plate that would obviously you would screw to your piece of wood and then you can grab it in expansion in your jaws like so I received these pincer pincer jaws and those are serrated so you can use them for small turnings if you've seen some of my last project I used these especially for small thin finials and then you can also use them in expansion and they are serrated outside these large cup jaws are very nice I have to say that so far I didn't find a project to use those on but I know of a few projects that I did before that I really wished I had one of these to grab something a little bit larger than I normally do and those are also serrated so you will know you are grabbing really well it's serrated outside and on the inside so either in expansion or in compression I also received this drive center as you can see I'll bring it here so you can see it better and it's very nice because you can actually change the tip here to different tools you can use this screw with it I can only imagine that this would be very good if you're turning bottle stoppers so might be good for those and you can also have a flat completely flat tip for driving whatever I wouldn't know the key that came obviously to open and close the chuck itself and a small allen key to open and close the bolt allen set screw there's an allen key and an allen set screw so to open and close that one and of course it comes with this handy key to open and close the bolts on the chuck so a lot of goodies and I think that for the price that I paid for this set and the price was 159 pounds for the entire set and I had to pay 10 pounds extra for the insert I think that for this price this is a really good set you have a lot of tools that come with a lot of accessories that come with that didn't came with my Nova G chuck I think you will be hard pressed to find any better system for that price so if you're working on a budget this would be a good choice again it's not the highest quality chuck it's not the highest quality materials it's not the highest quality of anything but for the price that you will pay you will get a lot of accessories and they're all working and they're all good if you're a good turner you can use these tools and produce really nice results so now at the end of our video my conclusion is that the Nova G3 chuck is a wonderful chuck I've been using it for years and I'm going to keep using it for years the Viper 3 chuck is very nice as well it's not the highest quality but you do get a lot of accessories for the same price that you would pay for the Nova G3 which comes with very little accessories this and this so would I recommend it I will if you're turning on a budget if you can afford better tools I would go with a better chuck system as far as the customer support for the charnwood I have to say that I was a little bit disappointed about being sent the wrong part twice and for the fact that I was sold the chuck initially with the wrong parts that wouldn't let me fit the screw inside the jaws although I never checked it myself charnwood claims that all of their jaws and accessories will fit the Nova G3 chuck but they're saying you're going to need a larger or longer bolts than the the bolts they are supplying I don't know if these normal bolts for the Nova will work with these or I have to get even longer bolts because I think all their accessories are a little bit thicker and heavier I want to thank you for joining me in this review video and I hope to see you back in my shop really soon