Month: July 2024

This evening, Viv Harvey had a couple of very different treats in store for us, namely some collet type chucks and a pasta cutter rolling pin.

Collet Chucks

Viv uses these chucks to hold small items securely, such as the tiny goblet shown below, without having to buy a wide variety of expensive scroll chuck jaws and then waste time swapping those jaws around. The wooden chucks have the added benefits that they are far less likely to mark the workpiece and there is no chance of metal-to-metal contact when working very close to the chuck. We’ve all been there!

He mounted a relatively soft sapele blank about 150mm x 80mm square between centres and rounded it before putting a chucking tenon on one end. It was then mounted in the chuck, supported with the tailstock.

The collet needs to have a tenon and shoulder so that it can be held in the scroll chuck, and a groove to locate a piece of elastic holding the four quadrants together. The nose of the chuck will be rounded over for safety.

These operations Viv quickly carried out before drilling an 8mm hole right through the wooden chuck and marked it 8mm for future reference.

 

He then parted and sawed off the chuck and put it to one side.

 

Next, Viv cleaned up the face of the remaining blank and then repeated the process, but with a 10mm drill. He made two more chucks from this blank, with 12mm and 16mm hole diameters.

Note that it is necessary to start with a small drill for the first chuck and then increase the sizes in order to avoid drilling into the next chuck with an oversize drill.

Rather than waste the stub of the blank, Viv cleaned up the face and drilled it out to take a screw – thus producing a screw chuck.

Returning to the collet chucks, Viv cut them into four quadrants on the bandsaw, remarking that he finds four pieces better than three – and easier to cut.

 

He immediately marked the quadrants of each chuck 1, 2, 3, 4, to keep them in the correct order, and secured them with butcher’s trussing elastic which lasts very well without degrading like ordinary elastic bands.

….and Viv kindly donated the four chucks to the club for inclusion in our collection of tools!

Pasta Cutter Rolling Pin

A number of designs are possible, depending upon the type of pasta required e.g. plain for sheet pasta; closely beaded for tagliatelle; wider beaded for ribbon pasta. On this occasion, Viv decided to make a rolling pin to cut ribbon pasta.

 

To make life easier, Viv uses a storyboard for the longitudinal dimensions and templates to set the diameters.

 

The rolling pin started off as a 250mm x 50mm square blank (beech?) mounted between centres, which was turned to round and a chucking tenon cut in order to mount it in the headstock, with support from the tailstock.

With the help of the story board and templates Viv marked off the handles with a thin parting tool and reduced the blank to the relevant dimensions with a spindle gouge. The rolling pin was sanded and the roller shoulders rounded off before adding v-cuts at the transition between handle and roller – these are aesthetic touches and can be modified to taste.

For the pasta cutting beads, he first marked the middle of the roller and then used the story board to mark the bead positions.

 

A thin parting tool effectively delineated the beads and the grooves were then widened to suit ribbon pasta, ending up with a depth of about 3mm.

 

To sand the grooves, Viv used home-made sanding sticks of various grits – sticks coated in PVA glue with sanding grit set into the glue. He finds that this gives consistent depth and sharp sides to the beads.

He tidied up the ends of the roller and shaped the handles for aesthetics and comfort and sanded them lightly. A finish is not usually necessary, but if one is applied, it must, of course, be foodsafe. Viv uses sunflower oil and the surplus wiped off with a cloth.

Finally, he parted and sawed the ends off and pushed upholstery pins into the ends of the handles for a nice touch. The picture at the top shows how they look.

Before the demo started, Mick Denton showed us an example of a t-shirt that can be made for club members at very modest cost. Complete with embroidered club logo and with a choice of conventional t-shirt or polo shirt, a show of hands indicated a healthy interest and Mick said he will progress inquiries with the maker before taking orders.

Tonight we had Dan Smith, proprieter of Taylors Mirfield, as our demonstrator, showing us his technique for making a 3-legged stool.

Dan started off with a general background introduction and then mounted the 200mm square sycamore seat pad blank in the chuck, using a faceplate ring with very short screws. He pointed out that, as a Yorkshireman, he was obliged to watch the pennies and that square blanks were cheaper than round ones but watch your knuckles!

He reduced the blank to round, taking care to avoid the corners and initially keeping the speed down so as not to have any breakout or splinters. Once round, Dan used the lathe indexing and the toolrest to mark out the positions of the three legs.

He did not actually drill out the holes, having a previously prepared blank, but he did show us his home-made jig for drilling the holes on a drill press at the correct angle and distance from the rim. Sorry, I forgot to take a picture of it, but it’s essentially a v-block mounted on a wedge to give the required angle. The exact angle will vary from stool to stool but is set to bring the legs out to roughly the same diameter as the seat – this provides stability without having legs sticking out so far that they become a trip hazard.

For each leg, a 35mm hole is drilled partway through the seat from the underside, and then a 22mm hole all the way through.

Dan next scooped out the centre of the disc, taking care not to impinge upon the drilled holes, and made a chucking tenon in the recess. Using a mix of pull cuts and push cuts with the bowl gouge he shaped the underside of the seat cutting the profile around the edges so that the angled 35mm holes were the same depth all the way round.

He used a skew chisel as a scraper to tidy up and then power sanded before finishing off with abrasive wax.

He reversed the seat onto the chucking tenon and then removed the faceplate ring before dishing the seat to shape, ensuring that the screwholes from the faceplate ring were all gone. After sanding, Dan used abrasive wax for the finish – but then admitted that this was unnecessary as the top would need to be tidied up again after the legs were fitted.

For making the legs, Dan uses a story board for the main dimensions (diameters and positions of features) and demonstrated its use on the single leg that he was making for the demo – he had two others with slightly different bands of decoration to illustrate some of the many options.

The leg blank was mounted between centres, turned down to the principal dimensions and tapered between max diameter and the tenon on the top end.

At this point Dan showed us that he takes the tenon down to the final diameter by using an open-ended spanner with the top jaw sharpened to shave away any surplus and the edge removed from the bottom jaw.

The bottom of the leg was sized with the story board and a parting tool before refining the taper along the length of the leg with a beading/parting tool used as a skew chisel. The story board was used to align on the shoulder at the top of the leg and to mark out the area to be decorated.

With the area marked out, Dan used a small spiralling tool held at about 45 degrees to texture the area. After multiple passes he was satisfied with the result and defined the area by v-cuts with a skew chisel.

The whole leg was then lightly sanded, initially rotating and then stationary along the grain. Masking tape was applied either side of the decorated area before spraying it with ebonising lacquer and leaving it to dry.

While the lacquer was drying, Dan mounted the seat in some Cole jaws and removed the chucking tenon on the underside with a bowl gouge (light cuts to avoid dislodging the seat), finishing off with some power sanding. The wax finish will be applied later when he finishes the top of the seat.

With the leg now dry, he re-mounted it between centres and removed any ebonising lacquer overspray and re-cut the v-grooves. Now to highlight the decorated area. Applying a small amount of acrylic paint on a brush and then brushing it out on a paper towel left a very small amount on the brush which Dan proceeded to lightly run over the texturing. This dry brush technique leaves just a a hint of colour to emphasise the texturing.

As time was now running out, Dan explained that he would allow the paint to dry and then spray melamine lacquer over it before parting off the leg. With the legs in place and protruding through the top of the seat, he would mark around the tenons then remove them and cut to length before final fitting.

He would then cut a slot in the top of the leg tenons and secure with walnut wedges. Some minor details – he should have relieved the edge of the shoulder a little to ensure a good fit, and the wedges would have some glue applied, but there is no need to glue the tenons themselves.

Finally, sand smooth and apply a finish to the top of the seat.

This evening, Bryan Brumfield demonstrated the making of a coloured discus bowl from an ash blank about 215mm diameter x 50mm thick.

With a tenon already on one side of the blank, Bryan mounted it on a screwchuck and marked the middle of the rim before using a bowl gouge to shape the underside.

To remove any turning marks, he experimented with using a Simon Hope negative rake scraper and a rotary friction sander.

Not entirely happy with the results, he then used a Sorby KT200 tipped scraper and finished off with an oil/wax mix and standard abrasives. Next he sprayed the wood with acrylic sanding sealer which was rubbed in with some Yorkshire Grit abrasive wax and then polished with a cloth and wax.

With the underside finished, Bryan reversed the bowl onto the tenon and faced it off before shaping the upper side of the bowl with a bowl gouge, mostly using pull cuts from the centre out to the rim.

After sanding, he applied a purple spirit stain with some paper towel….

….and allowed it to dry before sanding down to leave just a few areas of purple.

This was followed by a little red stain down one side and some yellow over the red and towards the middle. Next was some royal blue splodged over the other colours, but leaving some gaps and some green here and there. These colours were all artistically applied after a bit of umming and aahing!

With the colour applied, he rubbed them all over with a bit of meths on a towel to blend the colours and remove any sharp edges.

After a few minutes, he sprayed it with acrylic sanding sealer and allowed it to dry. For a final finish, Bryan applied finishing oil and wiped off the surplus.

At this point he remarked that he would often take a bit off the edge of the bowl and colour it with a black marker to add definition. The whole thing would then be allowed to dry overnight before rubbing down lightly with webrax and adding a further coat of oil.

For the purposes of the demo, however, he proceeded straight to the next operation, which was to hollow out the bowl with a bowl gouge. He tidied up using the Hope negative rake scraper (more successful used internally) then finished off with sanding, Yorkshire Grit and a gloss wax.

With the demo complete, Bryan pointed out that he would later add more coats of finish on the rim and underside and reverse the bowl into cole jaws or a longworth chuck to remove the mounting tenon.

The grain of the ash was beautifully complemented by the colours applied and the final result was a very attractive little bowl. Thank you Bryan!

Chris Harkin was our demonstrator for tonight, with Jiminy Cricket his somewhat unusual subject.

Jiminy was made out of three main parts – body, head and hat – plus feet and hands, all joined together as appropriate.

The body was made first, with the blank set up between chuck and tailstock centre and then shaped to make the body segments before burning a line between the segments using a wire. It was sanded all over and finished off with an abrasive wax of Chris’s own making. Finally, it was parted off.

NOTE: the abrasive wax is a mixture of baby oil, beeswax and diatomaceous earth; Chris is still experimenting with exact proportions.

Next, the head. A blank was mounted in the chuck and the diameter trued up with a skew chisel. Chris then used the skew chisel and gouges to shape the head. The tailstock end was left blunt in order to form the nose.

Now for the hat. Mounted in a similar fashion between chuck and tailstock live centre, Chris quickly trued it up then shaped it with a gouge. To finish, he sanded it and then “painted” it with a felt tip pen with the lathe stationary. To reduce variations in colour, he applied wax while the ink was still tacky and then polished it with a paper towel at speed. Parted off and put to one side with the preceding two parts.

The feet and hands were turned as two items made from a cylinder mounted between the chuck and tailstock, parted off and then cut in half with a saw. In readiness for glueing to some welding wire, holes were drilled in appropriate positions – different for hands and feet.

To assemble Jiminy, Chris sanded flats on top of the body and on the bottom of the head, with another flat offset on on the top of the head for the hat. These were then drilled to accept dowels.

Two further holes were drilled in the hat brim to take the antennas which he made by curling the ends of some welding wire with pliers. Chris pointed out that the sharp ends of the cut wire need to be covered with a bead and turned inwards.

He then dowelled and glued the body head and hat together.

Taking some more welding wire, he bent the arms and legs to anatomically correct (????) shapes for an upright stance (he could have decided upon another stance e.g. prone), drilled holes to accept the arms and legs and glued them into position before also glueing the hands and feet on.

Chris drilled nose, sanded it flat and glued a bead on, with other beads being glued on for the eyes.

All was now complete other than for him to make a walking stick out of dowelling, with a coloured knob on top. To hold it securely, he filed a groove in Jiminy’s hand and glued it into position.

Now Jiminy looks ready to embark upon his adventures!

The competition table had a variety of items this month.

1st place was a natural edge bowl by Bob Green.

2nd place went to a set of miniature lidded vases by Viv Harvey.

3rd place was tied between a lidded box by Gerald Hubbard and a clock by Gerry Coles.