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WTB Duplicator

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I am a flute maker and would love to have a lathe duplicator for my Jet 1642...something like the Vega D36 or maybe some other model would be great.Or if you had started making your own and gave up on the idea and want to sell what you have started or if you have ideas that would help me that would be appreciated!

Thanks in Advance!
 
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Roger Wiegand

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Have you used one? If not, I fear you might be disappointed, so suggest you try it to make sure it will do what you need prior to investing a lot of time/effort/money. Two primary issues, 1) you're scraping a spindle turning, which yields a terrible surface, so you can't get to actual final dimension because you need to leave a significant amount of material to allow you to sand or finish cut to a smooth surface and 2) it won't replicate fine detail, being limited by the shape of the cutter and, again, the need to leave enough excess material to sand or cut to a final surface.

I've found it worked better to set up a marking template to get elements at the right places along the length of a turning and then as many go/no go gauges as required to set key diameters. It's pretty easy then to fill in between your marks by eye. Just as in fitting a box lid it's possible to size components to a few thousandths of an inch by hand with gouges and skews; I was never able to accomplish anything like that with a duplicator due to the tearout.

Probably not so important for your use, but doing it by hand is also a lot faster, for example if you're doing lots of balusters. A gouge or skew moves a lot more wood quickly than one of those scraper points.
 
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Roger is right on in his thoughts. I had a rather expensive Vega for about two weeks in my early days of production turning. It took more time and fiddling to get the duplicator set up than it did to turn the pieces by hand with a story stick. And as mentioned, the scraped finish is unacceptable.
Did you tray talking to other flute makers? My son has made a few, and he got loads of help and advice from some professional flute makers.
 
Joined
Feb 21, 2011
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Location
Laurinburg NC
Have you used one? If not, I fear you might be disappointed, so suggest you try it to make sure it will do what you need prior to investing a lot of time/effort/money. Two primary issues, 1) you're scraping a spindle turning, which yields a terrible surface, so you can't get to actual final dimension because you need to leave a significant amount of material to allow you to sand or finish cut to a smooth surface and 2) it won't replicate fine detail, being limited by the shape of the cutter and, again, the need to leave enough excess material to sand or cut to a final surface.

I've found it worked better to set up a marking template to get elements at the right places along the length of a turning and then as many go/no go gauges as required to set key diameters. It's pretty easy then to fill in between your marks by eye. Just as in fitting a box lid it's possible to size components to a few thousandths of an inch by hand with gouges and skews; I was never able to accomplish anything like that with a duplicator due to the tearout.

Probably not so important for your use, but doing it by hand is also a lot faster, for example if you're doing lots of balusters. A gouge or skew moves a lot more wood quickly than one of those scraper points.
Wow Roger I am glad you chimed in.I turn mine by using measurements ,story sticks etc and was just thinking a duplicator might help speed it up. I get pretty good results like I am doing so I guess Ill keep doing it my way....SO I guess if it isnt broken dont fix it lol....Thanks again!!!!
 
Joined
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Messages
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Location
Laurinburg NC
Roger is right on in his thoughts. I had a rather expensive Vega for about two weeks in my early days of production turning. It took more time and fiddling to get the duplicator set up than it did to turn the pieces by hand with a story stick. And as mentioned, the scraped finish is unacceptable.
Did you tray talking to other flute makers? My son has made a few, and he got loads of help and advice from some professional flute makers.
Tom Im glad you chimed in also.I am making some nice flutes the way I am right now....with measurements, story sticks etc. And it works ...I was just hoping to speed tit up a bit....If I was younger I might would go a computeriized rout ( CNC maybe) but not at this point...
 
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