Tuesday, November 9, 2010

Making new tools for the wood lathe part 4 turning some handles

We have finished the hardening process and cleaned up the blades ready for handles.
The 2 tools in his blog are used with a lighter touch and so I went for a shorter handle that I could get a friim grip on an still control easily. As you can see I like big thick handles - my hands are quite large.
I had some dogwood blanks in my offcut bin so I used a 15-1/2 " piece for these handles and mounted the whole length to avoid loosing any during refining.
Here is the blank roughed out to start the hole for the tool shank.
handle1!
Next step I put on my old spindle steady rest to hold the handle centered for drilling a hole to recieve the tool shank.
It's just four sealed bearings running on pieces of miter track in a piece of plywood. (baltic birch.)
Seems to do the trick but you have to watch for tracks from the metal bearings .
It's on my list for a remake as I cobbled this one together for this job. It was off and old 12" swing lathe I had for a few years and I just never got around to making a new one.
My new lathe is 16" swing so I needed to modify the base a bit.


handle2

No comments: