Help please - tail end wobble

[duncanh]

I'm likely to be over that way Friday or Saturday if you'd like me to call in and see what's happening.

 

[Lightweeder]

I'm likely to be over that way Friday or Saturday if you'd like me to call in and see what's happening.

I'd appreciate it Duncan - it wouldn't be the first problem you've solved - though I'm not here on Saturday.

 

[tekno.mage]

I'm still struggling with this. There must be some reason why I'm getting an actual bend in a spindle. It shouldn't be possible!

Starting with the obvious - don't do the tailstock up too hard on long thin work (or work that is going to become thin) - too much pressure from the tailstock can easily (& almost unnoticably until it is too late) distort a long thin thing. You need just enough pressure that the revolving centre revolves with the work and not much more.

My partner & I make knitting pins, crochet hooks and drop spindles for a local yarn shop and have also have had various problems with long thin things "whipping" and with them not running true after reversing them (where needed). We use home-made wooden collets (as previously descibed) for reversing long thin items when needed and these work well and don't seem to mark the work.

We have had more problems in cold weather (our workshop has very little heating in it) - which we think is caused by either the wood or turner's fingers being too cold (don't laugh!) - so mounted an old bar-shaped greenhouse electric heater under the lathe bed bars.

I use a very small roughing gouge (which I think is intended for pen turning) to make most of my small thin items - if sharp and used gently I find I get on with it better than with a skew and the finish is almost as good. To make the shaped end of a knitting pin or crochet hook I use a 3-point tool (used like a skew, not a like scraper) as I find this is easier to control and seems gentler than a full-sized skew chisel.

Another tip is to make the item all in one go. I have had a perfectly good small crochet hook ruined because a visitor turned up when I had almost finished it and I stopped work to chat to them for about 1/2 an hour. When I returned to the work on the lathe it had slightly bent due to internal stresses in the wood - and was impossible to finish.

Some wood is just difficult - & there can be major differences between pieces cut from the same plank. For long thin items I try to choose the most boring looking, straight grained pieces I can find. Anything with a lot of "figure" will probably whip more because of the internal twistiness of the grain.

Some species of wood are just more "whippy" than others in small section. I use Holly and Damson for small crochet hooks, and can usually get away with sizes down to 5mm with hardly any bother. 4mm & 3mm are trickier to do and require lots of "finger support" from the back while cutting. We use birch for the "stick" part of our drop spindles and find it a reasonable compromise between stiffness and light weight. Walnut & chestnut make nice spindle sticks too.

Hope you find some of the above of use.

 

[Jonzjob]

Going slightly off thread a mo Kym. Have you ever tried bamboo for your crochet hooks? The sections could be too short for knitting needles, but I have made a couple of small dia ones at about 3mm with no problems. Totally straight grained..

Comme ça

 

[tekno.mage]

Hi John,

No, I've not tried bamboo, but would like to - where do you get it from?

I have some 3mm bamboo knitting needles I was given as a gift and they are lovely to use and made of a more suitable material for such slender things than any of our native hardwoods. (I've broken wooden knitting pins in the past - anything under about 10mm in ordinary wood seems a bit flimsy to me!)

Holly is good for crochet hooks down to about 3mm (smaller than that and the hook breaks too easily - as tested by a crocheting friend!) I only make around 60-70mm or so at the hook end the actual 3mm diameter, and taper up to around 5-6mm towards the other end. Crocheting friends tell me this is fine and means the overall hook is stronger (especially when accidentally sat on!). Some of them have shown me old wooden & bone crochet hooks with highly ornamented beads & coves on the non-hook end.

I've also made an 8mm "Tunisian" crochet hook which had to be 300mm long (rather than the usual 150mm) and had a knob on the end like a knitting pin.

 

[Jonzjob]

Someone on the flat forum was asking about bamboo and had a reply that garden centres sell up to quite big diameters of it, but I haven't looked for it myself?

It is really easy to turn and you can almost do the complete job with abrasives or as I did with a skew and abrasives. Just make sure the wall thickness is enough. Cut the tube to a bit longer than the length you need and split it down to square pieces with either a chisel or a Stanley knife. It splits very easily, but make sure you don't pick up any splinters as they are VERY fine and bl00dy sharp . Easy to support with your fingers as you turn.

How do you cut the hooks? I have a set of tiny solid tungstan carbide drills and rotary rasps I use.

Edit : - Nearly forgot. The hook shown above has 2 different sizes. A bit tricky to see on the photo.

 

[tekno.mage]

Thanks re the bamboo - I'll look out for some in the local garden centres.

How we cut the hooks depends on the size. For the very small ones (3mm & 4mm) I use a cheap rotary mounted on a board with a tiny little circular saw blade in it (like a tiny little table saw). The blades are very thin, blunt quite fast, but are very cheap when you can find them! (Any clues anyone? Our original ones were in a pack of 10 included with a cheap rotary tool from Woolworths about 10 years ago). They cut quite accurately and with a tiny kerf.

For 5mm - 8mm hooks, a scroll saw is used (bit tricky, but it works) and bigger hooks than that are done on the bandsaw with a steady hand. I touch up the large hooks after cutting with a TC burr in a rotary tool and I then finish each hook by hand with small bits of abrasive paper, which oddly doesn't take anywhere as long as you'd think and is a nice little job to do in front of the fire whilst listening to the radio!

I thought your hook had different sized ends! I'll try and remember to post a pic of one of my hooks up here tomorrow.

 

[Jonzjob]

These are my huge drills and rotary files. They were from good old Axy, but they can't get them any more. They are resharpened after being used in making the electronic boards in Silicon Valley

olid tungston carbide and how the hell do you shapren anything that size?