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Personal safety is paramount Jo. My late father lost his first love to an industrial accident during the last war. Whilst he was in Europe his girlfriend was working in an engineering factory, taken out by a lathe chuck key that had been left in the chuck. You can NEVER be too careful in this hobby, in my humble opinion.Cheers Graham.
No, not yet Colin Jo
On the subject of chucking practice, I have had third thoughts and, because you show a picture of it (the first set-up in this thread) and others might follow, I am going to mention it after all. It is not considered best practice for the preservation of one's expensive and accurate 3-jaw chuck to stuff rough castings in it. (Especially not if winding it up with a pipe over the chuck key for a safe grip.) Castings, and cob-ends of rusty archaeological finds, go in the 4-jaw.