My new lathe chuck is out of concentricity by about .031″. Is this normal runout, or should I have the chuck replaced? What is normal runout?
Tim Inman: The more you pay, the less runout you should have. On a wood lathe, unless you intend to mount and remount the same piece several times, the concentricity really isn’t very important. This is because the wood will be absolutely concentric once you’ve turned it true in the lathe. Wobble would concern me much more than simple eccentricity. I’ll tolerate some eccentricity (runout), but I won’t tolerate any wobble.
