Tips & Tricks

[Robbo3]

Thanks for all your tips.

You're welcome.
Thanks for yours.

 

[Robbo3]

Centre Finders.
Axminster with 60° & 90°. Engineer's centre finder

300mm from Jennie Starbuck.
- http://www.artycraftywoodturning.com/
I've emailed her & she will sell these online but says the postage outweighs the £5 cost of of the disc.

Home made

Stiles & Bates (£11.90)
- https://www.stilesandbates.co.uk/produc ... 0/sn/SBLCM

 

[Robbo3]

Grindstone Dressing
A little job ideally suited to the lathe.
I have an ancient Black & Decker electric drill bit sharpener. The grindstone is about 60mm Ø & tapers towards the centre. Over the years the wheel suffered a glazed track where the bits touched it. No replacement stones were available from B & D so I decided to attempt to dress the wheel myself.
To mount it I used a length of hardwood dowel held in the long nose chuck jaws & turned to a push fit. Except that I made it a fraction too small & had to use masking tape to bring it back up to size. The tenon shoulder helps the stone to run true.

A single point diamond dresser was used gently to unglaze the wheel.

 

[Richard_C]

I like the perspex disc center finders, its on my 'make' list now and I will put 4 extra holes to mark out screws for faceplate - thanks.

Here's a few dead simple things I find useful. New to woodturning but not new to general diy/fixing/making.

My lathe is the belt move type rather than variable speed. Set it up, go away for a week, what speed did I leave it on? Unscrew guard - long thread on bolt so takes a while - just to see what it is. Had all sorts of ideas like fitting a transparent panel to the belt guard, ended up with this - a piece of paper stuck to the leg and a magnet you can move about.

Next up, all that measure three times cut once stuff we learn. I have a chuck and 3 sets of jaws. On a piece of paper stuck on the side of a cupboard I have listed the ranges and marked up shaded areas with the ranges. That means you can measure and/or simply put the calipers to the chart and use that. Also helpful to stare at while you think "hmm, how can I mount that .....?"

I had the luxury of a double garage with no real need to keep a car in it, but now an adult offspring is back home for several months so I need a cars-worth of space. Rearranged to suit, and made 3 'screens' that I can move around to give a bit of protection. Left over fibre board underlay and some 'stick' I had in. A coat of leftover ceiling emulsion helps with light, and it helps watching the far side of the profile as you work. I wouldn't start on a big chunk of out of balance wood with a car nearby but for most situations its fine - car isn't in the firing line.

All simple, a bit too simple for people here but beginners like me might get some ideas.

 

[Robbo3]

They are brilliant Richard. Thank you.

Deep Sanding

Locking forceps
NB: Hold the outside, not with fingers through the handles. If the abrasive catches it could do serious damage.
Dowels with a slot cut to hold the abrasive. Use hand held or with a drill.
If you fold the end over & secure it with an elastic band you can use it to sand the bottom.

Small flap wheels & 200 x m4 arbors
Flap wheels: 30 x 10 & 20 x 10mm, M4, 40-320g, £2.30 each
Arbors M4: 100mm £2.17, 200mm £2.77
- https://www.thepolishingshop.co.uk/flap-wheel-abrasives

 

[Jonzjob]

I hope that those flap wheels work Rob as I have just ordered some :mrgreen: :mrgreen:

I have a flap wheel that I have had forever and it's getting a bit worn down now, but it's different in that the flaps are also cut into separate fingers It makes it really good on curved surfaces. The problem is that I haven't been ablt to replace it and can't remember where I got it from

 

[Robbo3]

I have a flap wheel that I have had forever and it's getting a bit worn down now, but it's different in that the flaps are also cut into separate fingers It makes it really good on curved surfaces. The problem is that I haven't been able to replace it and can't remember where I got it from

Make your own. This one is emery cloth.

 

[Robbo3]

Drill Chucks
Handle
Rather than hold a drill bit with pliers or mole grips & risk scoring the shank, you could just hold the bit in a small hand held chuck. As long as you make a central indent larger than the bit, it will self centre. Same applies when using a spindle gouge to bore a central hole. None of this wobbling all over the place & making an oversize hole.
I added an old handle that was not likely to get used for anything else.
Most Jacobs type chucks, whether hand or key tightening are threaded 1/2"x 20 UNF for 13mm capacity chucks & 3/8"x24 UNF for 10mm capacity chucks. The threads are mainly female but there are a few with a male stud. Source a suitable bolt, cut off the head & locktite the thread into the chuck. Drill out the handle to suit & epoxy the other end of the thread into the handle. I drilled all the way through & added a pin to prevent the stud from turning.

This drill chuck is mounted onto a 3/4x16 UNF adaptor, which was made for me by a club member, to fit my first lathe. I could use a another adaptor to mount it but it's just as quick & easy to hold it in the chuck.

 

[Richard_C]

I'm learning a lot just by reading old posts on this forum, not got back to page 631 yet but when its too cold to get out in the garage for very long its not a bad way to spend some time and learn a bit.

Now for some more simple things. "Free Stuff - yippee".

A while back I had a delivery in a big cardboard box, and the staples were still on my workbench when I was standing there looking out into the garden and having a think. Empty brain, that's when ideas happen. Oh...free makers mark.

Those big staples bend easily in one dimension but are pretty stable in the other. Quick curve around a screwdriver shaft, a minute with pliers and a cork from a wine bottle. Being light and copper it glows red in a blowlamp is seconds.

Moving on. I'm not a cheapskate, honest, happy to spend good £££ for decent tools that I will use a lot. But some things that I'm not sure about, will I use lots or will I not, or is it so simple its easy to diy, well then I'm happy to try things out.

There was a topic here about bowl sanders, so I looked at a few then saw a kit which was mainly a bearing. So, stand in garage and think, surely I must have a spinny-thing in my bits box. And there was,a caster. The plastic wheel bit might have been a place to start but maybe not that robust, but the spindle looked useful. Process, bit of old rolling pin, shape, drill, thwack caster shaft in, ca glue first some stiff foam packing then a softer bit of old mousemat then a bit of velcro from the sewing box. Quick makeshift handle to try it, will do a better one if I end up using it a lot, dab of 3 in 1 down the shaft and ......

It works! Bit noisy but can't see why I would need anything else. I made the wooden bit long enough to take the caster, if I do it again I iwll do is so that the total length (wood+foam layers) takes the caster so overall its a bit shorter. Fine as it is for outside work and shallow curve inside work, bit clumsy for small inside work but there are good alternatives in the post just a couple before this one.

]

 

[Robbo3]

I like your thinking. Keep it up.

 

[ed-fish]

Some great tips here. All relatively easy to achieve but they hadn't occurred to me! Thanks for sharing them.

Seconded.
Great tips.

 

[ed-fish]

Magnets



I use magnets all over the workshop. On the tail stock are a 150mm rule, a set of dial calipers, (they require a larger magnet because of their weight). A paintbrush with embedded magnets in both sides of the handle, because it can be hung from anything metal & it normally lives on the drill press. Another paintbrush lives on a head stock magnet & the pencil has a countersunk magnet screwed onto its end ... so that it never gets lost in the shavings.
All the magnets are attached with a spot of superglue so that they stay put & don't come away with the tool.

Brilliant idea. Will use this one tomorrow. :lol:

 

[HappyPixie]

Going back to the centre finders. I print my own. You can buy acetate A4 laser printer sheets which were once used for overhead projectors (back in the day). You can buy 5, 10 or 50 sheets on several e-commerce sites for between £5 and £15. I created a document with concentric rings and marked the centre points for the holes on my ML8 faceplate as well as 90° and 120° axes. I just move the sheet around the blank until I can fit most of it in, mark the centre with a bradawl through the centre of the acetate sheet and mark the positions of the faceplate screw positions (if required). Then I use the centre point and a compass to mark a circle and run the bandsaw around the circumference. I now have the centre marked (for steb centre work) and the positions for the screws (if I use a faceplate).
If you have a Myford ML8, the PDF should be downloadable below.

 

[HappyPixie]

Another printout I created is a visual aid. When I start a bowl, sometimes the grain on the surface makes the use of a wide rim appropriate. In order to get an idea of which ratio of hollow to rim I might like I refer to the PDF below to see what might work. It's just a bunch of different rim to hollow ratios illustrated on an A4 page.

 

[Robbo3]

Thanks. The circles ratio is ideal for those of us that can't see proportions.

 

[Phil Pascoe]

https://www.cgtk.co.uk/metalwork/calculators/divider

This one's useful as well.

 

[Richard_C]

This is all good stuff. You can also print custom divider charts if you use excel or any similar software like open office or google sheets.

In a new worksheet put "1" in cell A1 then copy it down - in this example for total 8 rows (A to H). Highlight the range, from ribbon menu insert chart - pie chart - drag to resize as you want - format chart 'no fill' - chart design, elements, no legend or key, then you have a simple printable circle with 8 equal segments as a marking tool.

The advantage of this method is flexibility. Want 6 points, fill 6 rows. Into fibbonacci series and want charts with 5, 8 and 13 then fill that number of rows for each. You can play with inequalities - so fill the rows 1,1,3,1,1,3,1,1,3,1,1,3 you get 4 sets of 3 point s with equal gaps between each set.

 

[Robbo3]

Copy Holder

A piece of hardboard & a couple of scrap pieces to make a holder to view pictures or drawings without the need to keep turning away from the lathe.

 

[Robbo3]

Lathe Dust Collection

Standard rainwater fittings used to collect dust at the lathe with a shop vac. The top is an inverted sweet jar hot melt glued onto the down pipe. A wooden flange was turned to accept the dust hose & glued into place.

Mine sits out of the way on a shelf below the bed of the lathe.

The jar can be replaced with a rainwater hopper (& a 90° bend) if a larger hood is needed.

There are commercial types (eg Rockler) which use a banjo system to hold the dust hood.

Lots of videos on Youtube showing different mounting methods. I particularly like baconsoda's idea for it's simplicity
- (starts at about 3m 30s) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cKDYJwKy9nw

 

[Richard_C]

Good stuff, just thinking about a vac solution as I don't do enough to justify a proper extractor - yet. Got a proper dust mask now which makes life a lot better - the disposables were inadequate.

I had thought of making the hood out of a 4 pint milk container - inexpensive to the point of free-ness. Won't look as good as yours but will post anything I do come up with - if it works.

Thanks.