Hi,
So some time ago I was trying to figure out how to make the inside of my vases water tight. I still am. But it was suggested that I use epoxy finish. I found a great video by a man who does tons of epoxy finish on turnings. Lots of great information and ideas in that video. But he's got a crazy giant setup. As I've mentioned before my workshop is in a matchbox. So I set about figuring how to tone it down.
What I ended up with is pictured below. It cost a total of about $18.00. Plus $1,400 in research man hours. I am selling the plans here for only $1,350. The design was inspired by Da Vinci and the craftsmanship by Maloof.
The key was choosing the right motor and then finding all the fittings. A rotisserie motor is what you want, nice and slow and designed to run for hours. They range in price from pretty cheap to very expensive. I went with cheap. Many of the specifically rotisserie motors, are more expensive and really have no mounting brackets or anything. They also take a square peg as the driver. I found these little guys which are dirt cheap and actually have mounting holes and a male drive rather than a female.
I'll post a pic in case the link dies.
You can see it comes with a little brass driver that fits on the post coming off of the motor. So how do get something this small to drive a big ol 1-1/4" drive faceplace? That was difficult. Seems finding an actual fitting for a 1-1/4 x 8tpi was not gong to happen. So what I did was I took a 1" pine dowel and just crammed it in there and tried to force some threads on it. Not pretty. Or successful, really. But I got like 1 or 2 threads, enough to screw it on and off a few times. maybe more. Then I bought a 12mm deep socket for a socket set. I drilled a hole in the other end of the dowel and glued that in. Now that tiny little motor can turn my vase.
I thought about how much "power" these little guys were gonna have. But I figure, they have to be able to turn like.. a chicken. And my vases maybe the size of a chicken but they will be hollow. and .. not made of meat. So I think it'll be ok. I made the holder so there would be a second wall that would bare the brunt of the weight rather than the motor, added some wax, and presto.
So, lessons learned
1) make the threads better on subsequent model. Great ideas here in this link.
2) design scaffolding or whatever more intelligently so it will accommodate greater weight/size pieces. This works for may small trial vase and I figured I could screw it down if necessary but If I rebuild I'll make it nicer.
3) could probably use a bearing in the support wall and maybe in the driver wall.
4) motors come in different speeds. This two pack is actually two different motors one 2.5 rpm and one 6 rpm. Go with the 6. 6 rpm it turns out is incredibly slow.
But other than that I think it's pretty sweet. You can take the post off the contraption very easily because of the socket, and the post can ( supposedly ) screw on and off the face plate so that's modular as well.
I hope my (enjoyable) pain and suffering inspires someone and or saves them so work.
Raif
So some time ago I was trying to figure out how to make the inside of my vases water tight. I still am. But it was suggested that I use epoxy finish. I found a great video by a man who does tons of epoxy finish on turnings. Lots of great information and ideas in that video. But he's got a crazy giant setup. As I've mentioned before my workshop is in a matchbox. So I set about figuring how to tone it down.
What I ended up with is pictured below. It cost a total of about $18.00. Plus $1,400 in research man hours. I am selling the plans here for only $1,350. The design was inspired by Da Vinci and the craftsmanship by Maloof.
The key was choosing the right motor and then finding all the fittings. A rotisserie motor is what you want, nice and slow and designed to run for hours. They range in price from pretty cheap to very expensive. I went with cheap. Many of the specifically rotisserie motors, are more expensive and really have no mounting brackets or anything. They also take a square peg as the driver. I found these little guys which are dirt cheap and actually have mounting holes and a male drive rather than a female.
I'll post a pic in case the link dies.
You can see it comes with a little brass driver that fits on the post coming off of the motor. So how do get something this small to drive a big ol 1-1/4" drive faceplace? That was difficult. Seems finding an actual fitting for a 1-1/4 x 8tpi was not gong to happen. So what I did was I took a 1" pine dowel and just crammed it in there and tried to force some threads on it. Not pretty. Or successful, really. But I got like 1 or 2 threads, enough to screw it on and off a few times. maybe more. Then I bought a 12mm deep socket for a socket set. I drilled a hole in the other end of the dowel and glued that in. Now that tiny little motor can turn my vase.
I thought about how much "power" these little guys were gonna have. But I figure, they have to be able to turn like.. a chicken. And my vases maybe the size of a chicken but they will be hollow. and .. not made of meat. So I think it'll be ok. I made the holder so there would be a second wall that would bare the brunt of the weight rather than the motor, added some wax, and presto.
So, lessons learned
1) make the threads better on subsequent model. Great ideas here in this link.
2) design scaffolding or whatever more intelligently so it will accommodate greater weight/size pieces. This works for may small trial vase and I figured I could screw it down if necessary but If I rebuild I'll make it nicer.
3) could probably use a bearing in the support wall and maybe in the driver wall.
4) motors come in different speeds. This two pack is actually two different motors one 2.5 rpm and one 6 rpm. Go with the 6. 6 rpm it turns out is incredibly slow.
But other than that I think it's pretty sweet. You can take the post off the contraption very easily because of the socket, and the post can ( supposedly ) screw on and off the face plate so that's modular as well.
I hope my (enjoyable) pain and suffering inspires someone and or saves them so work.
Raif