Jawed chucks are the most versatile of chucking designs being able to hold virtually any item. Unlike most other chucks, jaw chucks are generally designed to hold and spin the work rather than a tool. They are highly accurate and can be adapted to hold complex shaped pieces.

Three jaw chucks have three jaws that are connected by a common scroll plate. Since the three jaws are linked by a common plate the chuck is self centring to a good degree of accuracy. Metal working three jaw chucks are commonly used to hold circular or hexagonal cross section bar and have stub ended jaws. If greater centring accuracy is required it is possible to purchase a three jaw chuck which incorporates fine adjustment screws on the jaws.

Four jaw chucks for woodturning and metal work differ significantly. Metal working four jaw chucks have independently moving jaws which allow the chuck to hold irregularly shaped pieces of work. Independent jaws also provide the ability to centre the work to an excellent level of precision. These benefits come at the cost of speed and complexity - a four jaw chuck is slow to set up and requires significant practice and training to use correctly.

A four jaw chuck for woodturning on the other hand is similar to a three jaw metal working chuck in that the jaws are linked via a common scroll plate. The reason for linking the jaws is two fold: wood can not be worked to the same accuracy as metal so the accuracy gained by using independent jaws is wasted and using a common scroll plate makes operation of the chuck much faster.

A modern woodturning chuck has replaceable / interchangeable jaws, an indexing ring built in and one handed operation. The chuck will generally come with one set of jaws which is invariably a set of dove tail jaws. Dove tail jaws are used to hold spigots and expand into an undercut in the foot of a bowl.

Multi-jaw chucks generally come with six or eight jaws linked by a common scroll plate. They are used to hold complex or delicate pieces of work that would be difficult to hold any other way. Multi-jawed chucks are very uncommon in the wood working world.