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, and so on. In this study, an approach for in-process monitoring and for deciding commencing point of the chatter vibration using the frequency band-energy method was proposed. From this method, in-process monitoring system for detection the chatter vibration was developed, and investigated its practical possibility. As a result, it is shown by experiments that the chatter vibtation can be detected accurately. Since the changing pattern of the signal energy in certain frequency band during chattering is seldom affected by the variation of cutting conditions, if adequate pre-measures are taken, this method can be widely used in most machining processes.