Post a photo of the last thing you made

[Orraloon]

I have seen a few home made hot dog handle arrangements but thats the most professional looking one yet.
Regards
John

 

[Dr Al]

I have seen a few home made hot dog handle arrangements but thats the most professional looking one yet.
Regards
John

Thanks John

 

[isaac3d]

Beautiful, but spoiled by the knobs.

Perhaps you didn't read the OP's message:
"The handles are made using a red stabilised maple burr, but I didn’t use enough dye in the cactus juice so the blanks ended up rather pink, but perfect here as it’s my niece’s favourite colour."
So, how is "perfect" for the intended recipient "spoiled"?

 

[Cooper]

A new, slightly fatter, mandrel, for turning the tubes for some whistles - along with freshly turned tubes in Padauk, Pear and African blackwood.

Most impressive. Some time ago I made several slide whistles and had real difficulty boring the holes straight what is your technique and how is the mandrel used?

 

[Phil Pascoe]

Perhaps you didn't read the OP's message:
"The handles are made using a red stabilised maple burr, but I didn’t use enough dye in the cactus juice so the blanks ended up rather pink, but perfect here as it’s my niece’s favourite colour."
So, how is "perfect" for the intended recipient "spoiled"?

I read it perfectly well, thanks, it's still spoiled in my opinion. An opinion to which I am perfectly entitled.

Lucky girl, btw.

 

[niall Y]

Most impressive. Some time ago I made several slide whistles and had real difficulty boring the holes straight what is your technique and how is the mandrel used?

Hi there, Cooper,
I use a Record long hole borer, on my lathe, to give me the initial hole of 8mm. I widen this with a 12mm long hole borer that a friend gave me , ( I've not seen these for sale, but they obviously exist because I have one )
. The bored out tubes are then slipped onto the mandrel, which in turn is fitted between an ER32 collet chuck at the headstock and a live centre at the tailstock of the lathe The outer diameter of the tubes is then turned, which corrects any misalignment of the hole and gives a fairly consistent wall thickness.

The new mandrel shown in my last post is 1/2 inch. This involves widening the 12mm hole with a home-made reamer. For this I used a straight 1/2 inch , double bearing router cutter. As in attached photos. The bottom 1/2 inch bearing has been changed for a 12mm steel bushing, and the shaft has been heat-shrink fitted into a long steel tube. This is used upright in a vice as per photos and gives pretty good results
Niall

 

[Garno]

To keep the old mind ticking over during these prolonged periods in bed I got a 3D printer.

I had a big problem with my first 2 filaments in that they were too brittle to use so had to get some more.

This is my first ever print, it is the Ender dog and comes as a sample.
I am pleased with how it came out, just over 5hours 30 minutes to print.

 

[Droogs]

v nice, pity it has distemper

 

[Padster]

So another something new... This time some secret compartment keyrings, I was using up two offcuts (I know there are three!) ... the leftmost is believe it or not Purpleheart, the right most is teak, the centre one is not really an offcut but my first home made blank, using some left over resin, I added some glitter for sparkle, some red colouring, and a few other small offcuts of wood - have to say very happy with the outcome!

Regards

Padster

 

[Cooper]

Hi there, Cooper,
I use a Record long hole borer, on my lathe, to give me the initial hole of 8mm. I widen this with a 12mm long hole borer that a friend gave me , ( I've not seen these for sale, but they obviously exist because I have one )
. The bored out tubes are then slipped onto the mandrel, which in turn is fitted between an ER32 collet chuck at the headstock and a live centre at the tailstock of the lathe The outer diameter of the tubes is then turned, which corrects any misalignment of the hole and gives a fairly consistent wall thickness.

The new mandrel shown in my last post is 1/2 inch. This involves widening the 12mm hole with a home-made reamer. For this I used a straight 1/2 inch , double bearing router cutter. As in attached photos. The bottom 1/2 inch bearing has been changed for a 12mm steel bushing, and the shaft has been heat-shrink fitted into a long steel tube. This is used upright in a vice as per photos and gives pretty good results
Niall

Thank you most helpful. I'll look up the Record long hole borer. I bought a set of 30cm wood drill bits off Amazon and they were hopeless. In the end I drilled from both ends and then tried to get them to align with the long bits.
Some of the slide whistles were more successful than others. I used oak from a tree I felled in our garden and the whistles are nice home grown presents. Its probably not the best wood but it gave a nice tone and the children enjoyed them.
Thanks again
Martin

 

[Cooper]

I widen this with a 12mm long hole borer that a friend gave me

Do you have a 12mm hollow centre in your tail stock or do you have one that fits in the saddle?
Years ago when young I was a wood work teacher I had long augers in my workshop and a hollow centre that fitted in the saddle. Though they weren't 12mm or 1/2" as we only used them for table lamps and precision wasn't particularly important.
I have a very old graduate lathe that I was allowed to take from a later department, which otherwise would have gone for scrap. None of the kit came with it.

 

[niall Y]

Do you have a 12mm hollow centre in your tail stock or do you have one that fits in the saddle?
Years ago when young I was a wood work teacher I had long augers in my workshop and a hollow centre that fitted in the saddle. Though they weren't 12mm or 1/2" as we only used them for table lamps and precision wasn't particularly important.
I have a very old graduate lathe that I was allowed to take from a later department, which otherwise would have gone for scrap. None of the kit came with it.

Attached, are a couple of photos of a post for fitting into my lathe's saddle. My lathe is a Union Jubilee, so the 1 inch post will be similar to yours. - Bye the way, you will have to ream out the hole in the post with a Morse taper, but you can do this on your wood lathe, by hand. With the lathe turned off and the reamer in a Jacobs chuck in the tail stock; the drilled-out post can be held transversely in a chuck in the headstock
I am at present using a metal working lathe, for which I made a a more versatile fitting.
A tenon on the work piece fits into a pillow-block bearing. Behind this are fitted. interchangeable bushings. to suit the hole being drilled. You should be able to cobble together something similar for your wood lathe
Niall

 

[Tris]

Some good ideas for the 'spare 5 minutes' list there, thanks

 

[point5clue]

This is for my Mum - she needs something she can see from the garden through the conservatory window. The kits are only a few quid and I thought I'd have a go. The timber is a re-sawn 3x2 glued up. Normally I try to make wood a bit darker to pretend its something more fancy, but in this case I used clear water based varnish to keep the light colour for the contrast to the black. The wood is about 9mm thick, but the post for the hands was short so I routed out a few more mil. Basically the same cost as a ready made clock, but kept me out of trouble for an afternoon!

 

[Cooper]

Attached, are a couple of photos of a post for fitting into my lathe's saddle. My lathe is a Union Jubilee, so the 1 inch post will be similar to yours. - Bye the way, you will have to ream out the hole in the post with a Morse taper, but you can do this on your wood lathe, by hand. With the lathe turned off and the reamer in a Jacobs chuck in the tail stock; the drilled-out post can be held transversely in a chuck in the headstock
I am at present using a metal working lathe, for which I made a a more versatile fitting.
A tenon on the work piece fits into a pillow-block bearing. Behind this are fitted. interchangeable bushings. to suit the hole being drilled. You should be able to cobble together something similar for your wood lathe
Niall

Thank you most helpful.
Martin

 

[Garno]

I have today printed out my very first ever box for pen kit bushes. All done from my bed.

I have done every part of it myself without having a clue how to use CAD software.

Ideally I would of liked the lid to sit flush but don't know how to do that but I am happy with the result I have, I also will be putting in some hard foam that I will drill 2 holes into so that I can push the bushes in.

The writing also has not turned out great as the letters of "Rocket Bullet" seem too close together, that being said I personally don't think it is bad for a first effort.

 

[D_W]

irons...lots of them. There are something like 4 commercial irons in this stack that I use to trace the slot, but the rest are made all by hand or at least partially - I don't have any large machine tools.

the point of them is to test various alloys as well as getting a sense for heat treatment routine (by hand and eye) with each. Some of the earlier irons in steels that have less room for error are hit or miss. All of them plane fine, but some are a touch soft or have slightly larger grain than they should which leads to them being a little overhard but also chippy.

Learning what I've learned, I can take these back to the forge, shrink the grain and reharden them and maybe give a few away.

My time to make an iron has shortened from about an hour and a half to half an hour plus about 10 minutes for heat treat, and that includes cutting the initial bevel after heat treatment (too much before with some of the water hardening steels leads to a lot of warp), flattening the back and honing them.

I have been having a field day testing them both for edge behavior and for how they work on the stone. There is a point of bliss when everything is right, and it's not that hard to hit. All of these steels are O1 or more plain than that, so none are "long wearing" irons, they're more like a vintage plane iron but with control of the hardness.

it's a treat to see how each will work and figure out certain things - like why some steels that are really popular for knives (like 52100) only make an okay plane iron.

The last picture is a view through a full width shaving made of 1095 steel. Sharpened with about $40 worth of sharpening stones and a common stitched buffing wheel.

Super thin shavings are kind of corny, but they are very effective at letting you know if there is a nick more than a couple of ten thousandths in size vs. stopping periodically and looking through a microscope, which is kind of a pain.

I think the way tradesmen did a lot of experimenting with heat treatment process is a lot like what I'm doing here - which is the point - refining based on outcome and refining to improve outcome further without getting too scientific from the start and relying on controlled furnaces, etc.

I have had two steels (O1 and one more like a japanese steel) tested with results as good as furnace for one and better than anything published for the other, and then two (1084 and 1095 where results were poor and then just mediocre in destructive testing, which was a surprise). I later fixed the issues with both of those, but it was a little bit of a shock as the two I had success with are supposed to be more difficult to get right by eye without normalizing and austenitizing. this topic is so political in the modern blademaking crowd that by even saying that I did it ultimately caused so much static that I got banned for being suspected of being an alternate ID of a prior troll. Of course, I am not that.

Showing actual lab testing results for hardness and toughness and stating that you didn't normalize or separately austenitize steel is literally grounds for being banned - a complete surprise.

I've also learned that there is "too tough" for steel for woodworking. if a steel will accumulate damage without letting go of the damaged bits (due to toughness), then it's not going to be that interesting and the wire edge when you sharpen will also be persistent. But such things make a good knife because a person will have to bend the knife pretty far before it breaks, and that bending makes it difficult to claim that you're returning a broken knife that wasn't abused.

 

[Peri]

Yet another board - panga/maple with elm surround, and home made inlay banding

 

[Frogsuk]

Neighbours smashed their glass table top, so I striped a couple of pallets, put the wood through my thicknesser and rebated the back for cross members. They have just coated with 3 coats of Osmo oil and are very happy

 

[NickDReed]

Evening in the garage, made a little circle jig for cutting bowl blanks. Jig works well. Bandsaw is a pile of excrement! Cat is tired.