There have been many studies on chatter vibration in machining but there seems to be no regulations to decide the commencing point of chatter objectively. The development of an objective method which can estimate and detect chatter commencement is very much in need for automatic manufacturing systems, dynamic performance tests for machine tools, so on. In this study, therefore, the estimation and the in-process detection of chatter have been experi- mentally investigated for the turning process. As a result, the commencing point of chatter can be decided from the behavior of the maximum amplitude of the dynamic component of cutting force, where the maximum amplitude is suddenly increasing with the chatter commencement. Then the commencing point of chatter can be estimated practically by this method before the occurrence of excessive vibration. Also, it is possible to detect the occurence of chatter vibration through the in-process measurement, by monitoring the maximum amplitude of the dynamic component of cutting force.