The Tool Rest

Tuesday, April 14, 2009

Nova Outrigger Hazard

I recently came close to having what could have been a serious accident with the outrigger on my Nova 3000. As I swung the swivel arm, it came crashing to the floor. Fortunately my feet were clear, and I was wearing safety shoes, but this hefty lump of metal could have caused some serious damage if it had landed on a foot.

What had happened is that over the years the threaded rod that holds it all together had slowly screwed its way up through the casting which is fixed to the lathe, leaving very little threaded into the lever underneath. So when I loosened the lever, then swung the toolrest around, the lever dropped off, with the toolrest assembly following suit.

In future I will be checking that threaded rod regularly to make sure it is not projecting out of the top of the casting. With hindsight this is pretty obvious.

Friday, January 09, 2009

Inspiration from nature

Satoshi Fujinuma is a Japanese lathe artist who took part in the International Turning Exchange 2008. In this video he talks about his work and how he finds inspiration from nature for the form, texture and colour of his works.

You can see more of his craft work, art work, exhibition and other works on his website.

Meanwhile, Philip Streeting has published a document full of examples of how design inspiration can be taken from examples in nature. (18Mb pdf)

Monday, March 10, 2008

wikiWOOD

You are probably familiar with Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit. Now there is another wiki, one specifically for woodworkers, called wikiWOOD.

It is still very much in it's infancy, and there isn't a lot there yet, so this is a good opportunity for new editors to get involved and maybe set some benchmarks. A good place to start is the Community Portal, but woodturners may also want to join the Woodturning WikiCommunity, a collaborative group dedicated to improving WikiWOOD's coverage of woodturning and the organization of articles on the topic.

There are plenty of ways to contribute to wikiWOOD. You could jump right in and start a new article, but if you want to start small, then a simple contribution to an article like 'List of national woodturning organizations' is something that even a newcomer to both wikis and woodturning could have a go at. If you are good with a camera, then photographs are always needed.

I hope to see you over there soon. This is a great opportunity to help build a one-stop source of information about woodturning.

Thursday, January 24, 2008

INDEX

Last updated June 14, 2009

Woodturning technique

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Tools and Equipment

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Art & Design

History

Remounting dried bowl blanks

Six months ago you started off with a green log and roughed out a bowl blank and left it to dry. It is now a cupped oval shape, and you need some method to secure it on the lathe for final turning. Any spigots or recesses you left are now oval too. If you used a coring system, there are probably no spigots or recesses anyway:-

There are many options available, and will depend to some extent on what equipment you have available, the size of the bowl, and of course your personal preference. Today I'm going to show you the approach I took recently while preparing 100+ bowl blanks for final turning.

Ultimately I want to be able to mount the bowl on a chuck, gripping inside the rim, with no tailstock support. This way I can turn the outside of the bowl without having to make awkward cuts to work around the tailstock. So what I want is a trued-up recess just inside the rim that I can grip with cole jaws. Here is a picture showing how I cut this recess with a square scraper. I also make a slight dovetail cut with a spindle gouge.

I have the bowl blank sandwiched between the chuck and tailstock. I am using just two large Nova Power Grip jaws to drive the bowl, but they aren't really holding the bowl, just supporting it and driving it. The corners of each jaw press into the outside surface of the bowl blank. These four points provide a very stable platform for the blank. I use just two jaws so that the oval blank sits nicely between them. I align the bowl so that the jaws are 'gripping' across the short axis of the oval. This way there is no way the bowl can turn and come loose.

This larger bowl needed a block of wood (a reject candle holder; I new I would find a use for it one day) between the bowl and the tailstock.

In a later post I will show how I turn the outside of the bowl by mounting them on my cole jaws fitted with customised wooden jaws.