The lost Lathe Chuck

If you currently have small kids or have grown up kids you know exactly how the little things you are used to get picked up and placed somewhere else. This drives me absolutely nuts. My kids swear up and down that they don’t know where something is and swear they have never been in the area of your missing or misplaced property. I love working in my garage and sometimes is the only thing that keeps me sane. However, my lathe broke down and I had lathe parts all over the place from tearing it apart and cleaning the parts hoping it just needed a little tender loving care. As with woodworking or any wood craft things tend get dusty and dirty. I never seem to have time or the inkling to clean things until they break down.

 I always try to keep the lathe chuck near my lathe face plate so it’s easily accessible and if I need to make any changes on the lathe it can be done quickly without any problems. The problem is the little girl was in the garage with me and messing around with some of my tools. I don’t mind her being around my tools except she loves to take around and set them in a place that is not designated. I also don’t want to yell at her because I want her to be comfortable around tools and have knowledge and not be a stereotypical woman that “acts” like she does not know what a lathe or circular saw is. My goal is to raise my girls up having a basic idea of cars and tools. I definitely don’t want to have someone tell her that “she needs blinker fluid’ to get her turn signals to start working again.

I still can not find the chuck so now I have to order one online. This really makes me mad because as soon as I order it and it arrives the chuck will magically reappear right out in the open. I almost think the kids do this on purpose and put right in an obvious place to make me question my sanity. I decided to break down and order a mini lathe chuck to replace the missing one. I found a 3inch 3 jaw chucks online for about 46.00 which typically run about 65 dollars. It arrived in two weeks and I was back in business.

 Oh, my wife ended up taking my overalls to fix the zipper. Before she washed my overall she cleaned out the pockets and …… Yes, the lathe chuck was sitting on top of the of front load washer. My wife kindly handed it to me and said she found them in my overalls before she took them in to get the zipper fixed. Just my luck.. Yes, I had to apologize to the kids.. nothing like eating crow in front of the kids, the worst part is it was over a stupid lathe chuck