Even
with a heavy snowstorm that began at 1700 and had dropped close to 4
inches of wet snow by class start time of 1900, all the instructors and 4
out of 5 students were in attendance for the 4th Woodturning
Class. Our project was the cup and ball toy. We reviewed safety by
going over the latest issue of the American Woodturner, the American Association of Woodturners (AAW) semi-monthly magazine. This issue had
an article about safety issues while wood turning.
The
project began with a 8 inch blank of wood that had a 1.25 inch hole
drilled into one end with a drill press. The hole was 1.25 inches
deep. This hole would make it difficult to use a drive chuck to connect
it to the lathe, so an alternative is to make a jam chuck that fits
exactly inside the hole in the blank and the other end of the jam chuck
can accept a drive chuck. We had a 4 inch blank for the jam chuck and
used a rough gouge to smooth off the edges of half of the blank. To get
the jam chuck to fit the wood blank, we used a pair of dividers set at
1.25 inches and then carved down the chuck with a parting tool so that
the part of the chuck that would fit into the wood blank was close to
the same depth of the hole in the blank. The end of the jam chuck had
to be tapered a little bit to permit the jam chuck to fit snugly into
the wood blank and to fit the chuck all the way into the hole so that
the chuck bottomed out in the hole.
Once we got the jam chuck installed
in the wood blank we put a drive chuck on the end of the jam chuck and
the live center on the other end of the wood blank—now we were ready to
turn the blank. We wanted to turn down the cup side of the toy, where
the hole was drilled in the blank, but you have to be careful not to
turn it too much or you will puncture the wall of the hole. To carve
the handle of the toy we started about 1.5 inches beyond the cup end of
the blank—this was to avoid hitting the cup hole, which was drilled 1.25
inches into the end of the blank. The toy handle could be any shape we
wanted (straight, beaded, with coves, etc.). I elected to carve coves
to make it fit the fingers of the hand. I used the spindle gouge to
carve the cove cuts. For the end of the handle I added a tapered cone
with the point of the cone where we would part off the toy. To add a
decorative touch to the cup of the toy, we could use a wire burner, a
wire held between two handles, to wrap around the cup face as it is
turning on the lathe and the friction of the wire on the cup would burn
in a nice dark line. Another option for decoration that I used was to
apply a skew chisel’s leading point to carve a series of lines around
the cup as it turned on the lathe.
Parting the toy from the blank was done with a detail spindle chisel (a smaller version of a spindle chisel that allows one to carve down to a very small diameter to make the parting easy). We did not have to carve the ball—there was a bag of them available with a hole already drilled through their centers and with a drop of glue the string was fixed inside the ball. Tie the string to the handle of the toy and the challenge is swing the ball up and into the cup—not an easy task.
Parting the toy from the blank was done with a detail spindle chisel (a smaller version of a spindle chisel that allows one to carve down to a very small diameter to make the parting easy). We did not have to carve the ball—there was a bag of them available with a hole already drilled through their centers and with a drop of glue the string was fixed inside the ball. Tie the string to the handle of the toy and the challenge is swing the ball up and into the cup—not an easy task.
After
cleanup we headed home with our new toys and found that the snow had
just about ended and the streets were mostly cleared of the 4 inch
snowfall. Another fun project.
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| Hazelnuts in the snow |
