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Frogmanv2 posted:http://rizaydog.webs.com/treadlelathebuild.htm I love the idea of a treadle lathe but I'm not sure if I would love the reality of it. I'm tempted to build one out of pressure treated lumber so I can leave it out under the overhang as I really don't have room in my shop.
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Sep 17, 2012 06:20
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I watched a chair maker use a pole lathe a while ago. Dunno if you could spin up big bowls but it looks way easy to get going http://gallery.nen.gov.uk/asset63490_422-.html
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Sep 17, 2012 10:46
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My dad got a lathe like this one at an auction a few years ago. (our workshop is much cleaner as well)  His is grey instead of blue, and there are no Mastercraft markings on it (unlike the one in the pictures above). I guess it was made before the brand actually got the name Mastercraft. Like most Mastercraft tools, it works well enough, was probably cheap, and is incapable of maintaining small tolerances, etc. What pisses me off the most, especially when someone is clogging up this thread with so many pictures of gorgeous turned bowls (kidding) is that the cretin who designed this lathe never thought things through. See the yellow cap on the left-most part of the lathe in the top picture? See the threaded rod with a hole in the end, sticking out of the closest group of belt guides? You stick your bowl chuck on that and it hangs your workpiece on the outside of the lathe. I like being able to turn something on the outside of the lathe, especially larger pieces that won't let you turn on the inside due to size constraints, but having the option to turn a piece being supported by the bowl chuck on the inside would be nice. You can't mount the bowl chuck on the threaded section of that very same bar that hangs on the inside because it (for some inexplicable reason) changes size! That's right. They actually went to the trouble of changing the size of the threads on this bar for god knows what reason. Pic: If I'm not describing things clearly  So if I want to turn a bowl, I have to tack together some sort of ghetto-support for my tools instead of using the easily adjustable supports that came with the unit. Does anyone know why you would possibly do this? What reason you would have from preventing someone from trying to turn a bowl on the inside of the lathe?
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Sep 17, 2012 14:11
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I don't know why they'd do that, but it used to be more common. Chucks and things weren't really a "thing" way back when. The 4 jaw chuck was a pretty big boon to bowl turners when it was refined. A lot of old school guys never made the switch and still use faceplates for the whole shebang. Unless it's a really weird size most chucks have adapters to match the threads of your spindle as separate accessories. I'm not sure what wood you would use for a coffee cup. It would be hard on most anything. Lignum vitae maybe. Cedar, malachite  Persimmon 
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Sep 17, 2012 20:21
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My problem right now is I just can't think of anything I want to make with the wood that I have. I've got a couple 8"x8'x3/4" mahogany boards, some mahogany spindle blanks, random pieces of exotic woods that around 1/4-1/2" thick. Any ideas?
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Sep 18, 2012 19:40
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I guess you could try a segmented turning if your looking for something to do on the lathe
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Sep 18, 2012 22:18
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MarshallX posted:My problem right now is I just can't think of anything I want to make with the wood that I have. I've been wanting to build a small home bar for some time, you could build one and I could live vicariously through you. Some ideas: http://www.flickr.com/photos/komotini49/360794110/ http://www.mercantila.com/p/winsome-newport-wine-bar-expandable-counter-home-bar http://www.timothymccune.com/drybar.htm 
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Sep 18, 2012 23:46
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ChaoticSeven posted:Cedar, malachite Killer curves and great color on the cedar.
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Sep 21, 2012 01:40
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Haven't bothered to upload any more pictures until tonight, so here's another photodump. I ran the power planer over the benchtop to rough everything down to a common height. It didn't really save a whole lot of time, but it certainly saved a bunch of sweat and effort. I had to take about 3/8" off quite a few boards to get them all even. Then I had to take a hump out of the middle of the surface. So I ran a saw kerf down to the lines on each edge somewhere in the middle, and roughed everything down to that point. That left me with a flat-looking top.  Then I used a straightedge and a piece of chalk to check the flatness in several directions. I rubbed the chalk on the edge, and then rubbed the straight edge first across, then diagonally, then longitudinally. Where the chalk rubs off is a high spot. When you get consistent marks in every direction, you have a flat surface.  I used first the jack, and then the jointer plane to take off the high spots.  After I had it flat enough to work with, I measured for the location of the legs. I knew I wanted the legs to be about 64" apart, so they stand directly on the joists. I'm not afraid of the plywood floor breaking under the weight, but the less flex the better. I also didn't want the mortises to cut through any more of the dog holes than necessary. I centered each front leg between two holes, directly on top of one. I traced the outline of the leg, which is around 3x6". Then I decided how big I wanted the tenons to be. Some eyeball engineering gave me the sizes I thought looked the nicest. If I had to do it over again, I would change them slightly. I'll tell why in a bit. With the tenons laid out, I started sawing. Too late to change my mind now.  With the cheeks and shoulders cut, I only had to remove the waste between the two tenons. I used a brace and bit to cut out the majority.  Here's why I would change the layout if I did it over. I didn't have a chisel that size with me, and I didn't feel like going to get one. The one that I did have at the time was too wide, so I couldn't trim the corners square at the bottom. (There's really no excuse for it; we have a full set of much nicer chisels in the work van. I just didn't feel like going to get them.) I also found out that it's very inconvenient to try to smooth up the inside faces of those tenons. If it weren't as hard, a file would have worked fine. I should have been much more careful while sawing. In any event, with the tenon roughed out, I stood it on the now upside down table top, and traced around all the edges. I transferred all the lines around the edge to the top, double checked that it lined up, and started cutting. I sawed the sides of the dovetail, and put several kerfs to the line. I roughed that out with a chisel. Then I started mortising the square hole. I usually find it's a pain to clean up a mortise when you use a drill to hog out the waste. After spending most of my free time this week working on one mortise, I think I'll deal with it on the next three. It's kind of a pain to flip this top over, so I cut about 2/3 of the way down from the bottom, and then flipped it over once to finish.  The most tedious part of this process was fitting the tenon to the mortise. The tenon shows on the finished surface, so I really wanted to keep it as tight as possible. This wouldn't be such a problem if I could cut from the top to the bottom, but a leg doesn't do much good sticking up in the air. So I had to work my way down, smoothing the mortise up and taking a hair off of any surface that bound, 1/4" at a time. I wasn't sure it would be a wobble-free fit by the time I was done, but when I tapped it in that last little bit, it snugged up perfectly.  That gap you see on the left is just from the saw at the start of the cut. Oh, I forgot something.  I never flattened the bottom surface, so there's a gap at the back of the leg. I just marked around the leg and chiseled down the high spots. It now sits almost perfectly. Again full album here Yesterday I went to Harbor Freight and picked this up.  It's sold as a Windsor #33 Bench Plane. I found a dozen references online about it being a superb value at $9. I'm very impressed with the quality of the casting, and the figure of the wood. I'm not going to use it as a bench plane, though. I'm going to grind a radius on it and use it as a scrub plane. Don't think it'll replace your Lie-Nielsen and time soon, though. The tote is small, the cap iron/chipbreaker is as-cast on the mating surface, and the blade is nothing to talk about. I just need it to hog off material, though, so I think it'll work fine. I also got this in the mail today.  This is probably the nicest looking book I own now. I'm going to start reading it as soon as I finish this post. PS. I found out that Celotex (Aka aluminum clad polyisocyanurate) works well as a reflector for photography. See if you can tell at what point I discovered this 
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Sep 22, 2012 01:50
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One Legged Ninja posted:I also got this in the mail today. I've been wanting that book for awhile, it's definitely on my xmas list. The bench is really coming along.
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Sep 22, 2012 06:35
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Not sure if this is the exact right thread for this so sorry if i'm in the wrong place. I'm looking to make a prop, and I need a dowel rod(or just a 2x2 or anything really.) of Acacia(Blackwood, specifically, but any dark species is fine). For the life of me I cannot find this, all I can find are hardwood flooring panels and some molding. I think the smallest I can go is a 1x1 if it's square, and about a foot long(but really any length over 1' is fine) I just can't find the wood at my normal places, and i'm precariously close to buying this: http://www.searsoutlet.com/d/product_details.jsp?pid=93375&mode=seeAll to rip a leg off of and work with that, but i'd rather not deal with something with bolt holes in it. Before you ask: Acacia is what was called for, and it's not my decision so I can't just use whatever I have laying around. v  v
Vincent Valentine fucked around with this message at 11:07 on Sep 22, 2012 |
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Sep 22, 2012 10:48
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One Legged Ninja posted:Yesterday I went to Harbor Freight and picked this up.  Don't encourage people to make planes in that price bracketFor a scrub plane just buy an additional plane iron and radius the blade, that 9$ plane iron is totally junk. You can drop in the scrub plane iron in whatever plane you want to use then and have it ready to go. Awesome progress on the bench though
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Sep 22, 2012 20:31
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Vincent Valentine posted:Not sure if this is the exact right thread for this so sorry if i'm in the wrong place. I'm looking to make a prop, and I need a dowel rod(or just a 2x2 or anything really.) of Acacia(Blackwood, specifically, but any dark species is fine). Some googling led me to this thread, which pointed me to a cutting board at Wal-Mart of all places. You would have to rip the board down and laminate it, though, and it's more expensive than your tray table. There's also an $8,000 table on Ebay that you could cut a piece off of.  Acacia melanoxylon has a very small natural range, so I'm not surprised it's hard to find. Also, apparently there are over 1,300 species in the Acacia genus. Just out of curiosity, what are you trying to make? If it were me, I'd try to find out why it's specified, and if possible suggest an alternative. wormil posted:I've been wanting that book for awhile, it's definitely on my xmas list. The bench is really coming along. It really is the nicest looking book among all of my books. Not that I have that great of a collection. So far I'm enjoying it. Although I liked his writing style before I bought it, so maybe I'm a bit biased. It's a very nice binding, though, with crisp, heavy pages. I forgot to mention, in the last picture you can just see the top of a block of oak in the back with a piece of walnut sticking out of it. I got tired of whacking on my chisel with a hammer, and I've wanted a proper mallet for years. So I took a piece left over from the legs, and a scrap piece of walnut, and put them together. I mortised the head out with a slight taper, and carved the walnut away to match. I went a little bit too far, so I had to glue some contrasting wedges of cherry into the end of the handle. The handle slips through the head and tightens up as you use it. I would highly suggest building one to everyone reading this thread. You don't even have to cut a mortise. There are dozens of plans out there on how to cut four pieces of wood and laminate them together into a mallet head with a tapered mortise. It's so much nicer to use on chisels than a steel hammer, and you can make it any size you want to, based on the work you do. Plus, if you break it or wear it out, you can just throw a new one together and make improvements to it. Edit: Not an Anthem posted:
Trust me, they're going to make terrible tools whether I buy them or not. There are two types of tools I buy: ones that I expect to use for a lifetime, and ones that I buy knowing they'll be disposable. This plane certainly falls in the latter category. I got it mostly as an experiment so I don't mess up a good plane or iron while I find out what I like. I can handle throwing away $9 if it doesn't work well. I'd have more reservations about spending $50 on an iron and then grinding a huge chunk off for the first time. One Legged Ninja fucked around with this message at 20:42 on Sep 22, 2012 |
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Sep 22, 2012 20:34
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One Legged Ninja posted:Some googling led me to this thread, which pointed me to a cutting board at Wal-Mart of all places. You would have to rip the board down and laminate it, though, and it's more expensive than your tray table. There's also an $8,000 table on Ebay that you could cut a piece off of. Yeah, the Acacia genus has been kind of a huge pain in the rear end. There's only two species in the genus that have had reliable results, Blackwood which is what the commission is(and what it seems like most furniture is made with), and the very beautiful Koa. Seriously, give Koa a google image search if you get the chance; it's pretty stuff. Everything else seems to be hardwood flooring. As for what it's for: Halloween is coming up, and that means it's time to make a shitload of magic wands. This one was very particular. It has to be acacia, it had to be made of dark wood, and it had to have no finisher applied. I'd suggest an alternative, but trust me, people care a lot about their magic wands.
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Sep 22, 2012 20:50
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Vincent Valentine posted:Not sure if this is the exact right thread for this so sorry if i'm in the wrong place. I'm looking to make a prop, and I need a dowel rod(or just a 2x2 or anything really.) of Acacia(Blackwood, specifically, but any dark species is fine). For the life of me I cannot find this, all I can find are hardwood flooring panels and some molding. I think the smallest I can go is a 1x1 if it's square, and about a foot long(but really any length over 1' is fine) These are only 3/4" square by 6" but you could try contacting them and seeing if they have anything larger http://www.woodworkerssource.com/pb-afbla-p-5_pen_blanks.html
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Sep 22, 2012 20:58
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These guys claim to have lots of tassie blackwood in stock, maybe check them out.
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Sep 23, 2012 02:48
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philkop posted:BLAHBLAHBLAH It's time. I found an old desk on the side of the road. The drawers have the perfect thicknesses of wood needed for me. Will be posting once I have some more done. Whats a good cheap handsaw for cutting a bunch of straight and accurate pannels. Going to do this whole project on the cheap with hand tools, learning as I go. Wish me luck!
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Sep 23, 2012 16:29
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philkop posted:It's time. I found an old desk on the side of the road. The drawers have the perfect thicknesses of wood needed for me. Will be posting once I have some more done. I'd say it's easier and maybe even cheaper to get a cheap power jigsaw and clamp something straight to the board to be cut and use that as a fence/guide to ride the foot of the jigsaw along as you make the cut. http://woodgears.ca/beginner/index.html I quite like this guy's approach to beginning woodworking.
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Sep 23, 2012 17:11
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Lets Play Arson posted:I'd say it's easier and maybe even cheaper to get a cheap power jigsaw and clamp something straight to the board to be cut and use that as a fence/guide to ride the foot of the jigsaw along as you make the cut. Good site with some good info! That jigsaw actually looks a lot cheaper than I was imagining. Shouldn't be hard to find one for less than $20 on craigslist. In my head I was imaging a tabletop version. I guess a band saw. I used one way back in the day for shop class.
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Sep 23, 2012 17:23
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One Legged Ninja posted:Some googling led me to this thread, which pointed me to a cutting board at Wal-Mart of all places. You would have to rip the board down and laminate it, though, and it's more expensive than your tray table. There's also an $8,000 table on Ebay that you could cut a piece off of. A couple months ago, I saw a bunch of purpleheart cutting boards at TJ Maxx for like $7 on clearance. I'm still kicking myself for not picking up the whole lot.
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Sep 23, 2012 22:25
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Finally got a chance to play around with my lathe this weekend. I've been neglecting it for far too long. Here are two tapered rolling pins that I made. The closest one is ash and cherry laminated together, and the far one is from a dead branch that I cut off my apple tree. Both of them are finished in tung oil.  Here's the rest.  These are straight rolling pins, and I have to say that I really like the size, and control you get with solid ones as opposed to ones with handles. These are similar to the French style used for pastry, but 1/2 as long. The closest one is two pieces of oak laminated together, while the other two are laminated ash. I made the furthest one the perfect size to fit inside my cookie sheets for when I make pizza dough. The last item is a honey/anything drizzler, also made from laminated ash. The reason that I make almost everything from laminated materials is that I want to get rid of all the scraps left over from my larger projects. Speaking of... Here is the top of the stairs last week. Ugly painted cedar boards, and drab off-white walls. The brown just ate any light that managed to get in there and made the landing/hallway really dark.  I ripped up all the floorboards (just a little over an inch thick, and laid down 1/4" plywood and then capped it off with plain oak boards that I had cut and planed. I screwed them in after countersinking the holes fairly deep, making sure the screws were set well below the surface. I also put some taupe on the walls that I got for $10 a gallon from a paint/flooring store's oops section.  As you can see the hallway is much lighter, and looks much better now that most of that horrible brown paint is gone. I still have to scrape, prime and paint the wide trim along the bottom of the floor, and then paint and place the 1/4 round trim that goes where it and the floor meet. I sunk the centralvac outlet into the floor so I don't stub my toe on it, and lost the vent as all it did was open up into the ceiling of the 1/2 bath downstairs. The oak floor hasn't been stained in any way, just a few coats of polyurethane and some light sanding in between them. A few people have asked me what I did to the oak boards to make them look like that. Most people associate oak with that horrible bleached yellowish-orange crap they make furniture and cabinets out of. The reason that I sunk the screws down so much was so that I would have room to stick sections of dowl in, and then sand them flush before putting the poly on. (there are 29 filled in screw holes in this image, find them all!)  Here's the stairs leading down that I had done redone last year. They were originally that thick painted cedar, but I tore them all out and did them in 1/2" ply and oak, with 3/4" ply risers.  Same shot now:  The step leading into the bathroom appears to be built into the house in such a way that removing it would require a lot more effort and destruction of the surrounding walls than I would ever consider, so I'm going to scrape all the paint off and cover it with some oak I'll plane down to 1/4" and glue+screw into it. I'll also be sure to make a rounded front for it as well so no trace of that brown paint remains. The columns, spindle and railing are going to be another issue, but I'm not too worried about them right now. I think I might try and tackle them some time over the winter, but will have to have everything pre-made so I don't have to worry about my wife or I falling down the stairs while I'm fabricating them. Once they're taken care of, I think that might be the end of all my in-house woodworking until I save up enough money to rip off all the old wood siding (~84 years old) and replace it and the older windows with vinyl ones.
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Sep 24, 2012 00:36
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Currently trying to figure out how I can pull this off for my son: Specifically the large parts that are probably carved/filed into shape. The wheels look like laminated plywood, I wonder if I could do it all like that...I've got Sketchup open to build a plan but I don't even know where to start :P MarshallX fucked around with this message at 15:13 on Sep 27, 2012 |
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Sep 27, 2012 15:07
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 says that was probably done by CNC, or at least a very good deal of it. Not that it MUST be done by CNC, certainly a bandsaw and a router could do the vast majority of it.e: Well, jigsaw perhaps for the closed loops. Bad Munki fucked around with this message at 15:12 on Sep 27, 2012 |
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Sep 27, 2012 15:08
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Bad Munki posted:
It looks like the wheels are half moons. I'm sure it can all be done via Bandsaw/Jigsaw which I have both of, I'm just not sure where to start with making it structurally solid. The rocking horse we have right now gets reefed on, I can't see this being as strong as that.
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Sep 27, 2012 15:14
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Yeah, you know what, I actually take back the CNC thing. That sort of project is exactly the sort of thing someone would do by hand just because. It looks like everything is laminated, as suspected. I suspect the builder cut layers on the bandsaw, laminated them together, and then smoothed everything over by hand. Take the saddle, for instance: you can see the layers running the length of it (each layer is a vertical plane.) So you cut a bunch of pieces in profile that are roughly the shape you want, glue them up, and smooth them down with a file. Repeat for all major parts.
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Sep 27, 2012 15:21
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Bad Munki posted:Yeah, you know what, I actually take back the CNC thing. That sort of project is exactly the sort of thing someone would do by hand just because. Yep, that's what a guy at work and I were just talking about. I think I may try this. I'm sure I can just build this all out of 2x6 pine from Home Depot, no need to use my lumber guy.
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Sep 27, 2012 15:23
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I wonder how much the finished product would cost if you were to build two. Isn't most of the time involved figuring out the structure and sizing? If you have good tools the actual wood-working portion looks (relatively) tame.
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Sep 27, 2012 15:36
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While that could be time consuming, I suspect most of the time on this one would go to smoothing/sanding the shapes out after glue-up. Although a nice assortment of power sanders could make pretty quick work of that, too.
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Sep 27, 2012 15:45
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Here's where I got with a 3d design, I think it's doable: Most of it will be building a template for each component, laminating pine to get my width and then sanding it smooth. The thing I'm worried about most is the structural part of it, here's a look with the engine "stuff" hidden.  MarshallX fucked around with this message at 17:55 on Sep 27, 2012 |
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Sep 27, 2012 17:52
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Bonus if you can actually turn the fork. Extra bonus if the wheels spin. Negative bonus if you put spinners on them.
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Sep 27, 2012 18:06
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A lot of lathe goons making bowls in this thread. The October 2012 issue of Fine Woodworking has a 5-6 page article on bowl making using segmented pieces. I checked their website but didn't see an online link to the published article. It goes over how to make bowls like this. Skunkduster fucked around with this message at 18:20 on Sep 27, 2012 |
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Sep 27, 2012 18:17
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SkunkDuster posted:A lot of lathe goons making bowls in this thread. Whoa. I need a lathe
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Sep 27, 2012 18:44
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c0ldfuse posted:I wonder how much the finished product would cost if you were to build two. The majority of the time spent on that would be setting tools up, making jigs and templates, and sanding. After you set a tool up, you could cut a hundred pieces in one shot if you wanted to. If I were to make just one, I wouldn't bother with templates, I'd just lay things out and start cutting. MarshallX, I would suggest making the ends of your rockers not come to a narrow point like on the original. If you were to ever move it and drop it on the end, there isn't much wood there to keep it intact. On the rocking horse I've had forever, there are also little round bumps at each end to keep it from rocking past a certain point, but I don't know if that's necessary.
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Sep 27, 2012 22:03
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In my "younger" days, I was tight with my cousin who lives in NoCal. He had his own house, and a working garage that actively promoted both woodworking and pottery. I built an overengineered CD/DVD rack out of 3/4 oak plywood and oak tape to cover the seams. I loved the process of building the rack and finishing it, and even know I'm not 100% happy with the finish, it still is holding up well. Fast forward to today. I am an apartment dweller with no access to space to feed a woodworking habit. Yet I yearn to get back into the hobby. I'm wondering if organizations exist (clubs etc) that provide access to working workshops via co-op or membership arrangements. Can such a beast exist in this age of litigation? FYI, I'm in Southern California.
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Sep 29, 2012 00:02
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I suspect finding a local hackerspace would meet your needs pretty well, actually. You can often find all kinds of things there, from woodworking to automotive to art to electronics to you name it. There's even a thread!
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Sep 29, 2012 02:45
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Bad Munki posted:I suspect finding a local hackerspace would meet your needs pretty well, actually. You can often find all kinds of things there, from woodworking to automotive to art to electronics to you name it. Interesting idea, thanks for the heads up and linky!
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Sep 29, 2012 07:14
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Already watching: Woodwhisperer Woodgears Woodworking for Mere Mortals Any other good woodworking channels on youtube?
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Sep 29, 2012 07:20
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So I bought a buttload of air dried roughcut 4/4 maple and beech on craigslist for $0.40/bd ft. I intend on using the beech for a nice woodworking bench; I should have enough to make it with a 4" top. Does anyone think Id have a significant problem skipping the jointing step (I dont have a jointer) and just run both sides through my planer? I figured if i end up with some cupping or twisting, it wouldnt be a huge deal because I can laminate complimentary pieces together and end up with something relatively straight. Plus it's just a workbench.
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Sep 29, 2012 21:28
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Yeah, that won't work very well. The planer will just squash them flat, smooth them off then spit them out the other side in mostly the same shape they went in. You'll have big issues getting a good glue bond on any two pieces when trying to laminate them. Look into making a planer sled, but for a workbench the length of the pieces would probably make that impractical.
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Sep 29, 2012 21:47
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Wouldn't the planer make two smooth and parallel (albeit, non flat) sides? Would the glue not hold it okay, even with sufficient clamping force?
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Sep 29, 2012 22:19
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