I love your bowl of balls there Bowlman.
May I ask what your process is for making the balls? Do you use a jig? Just the sphere part. I'm sure the texturing and such all take their own specialized process. (By all means elaborate if you care to, just trying to clarify my question.)
James and all others who have asked ... I started making spheres/balls many years ago using the 3 axis method explained and demoed by Richard raffan on one of his first VHS tapes (yep, that far back, probably early 90's). I used that method exclusively for years. Recently, I began using a couple of the commercially available jigs. So now I use both. The 3 axis method is, I feel, the best all around method for spheres of any size. The jigs are fine as well, but small size spheres, say smaller than 1.5 inches, can be very iffy. When I get into production mode, as I have been recently, I begin with a spindle between centers, turn it round and make a tenon on one end. Mount the tenon in a 4 jaw chuck, nring up the tail stock. Then, following the directions from the jig maker, I proceed to rough out the sphere. Part it off and toss it in a box. Clean up the tailstock tenon and repeat until you reach the end of the spindle. After I get a box full of roughed out spheres, all still with small tenons on them, I go to one of 2 methods for finishing:
Method 1. Mount between cup chucks ala Raffan, turn off the nubbins, and sand to finish, usually starting at 120 and going up to 320 or 400 grit.
Method 2. Mount on my vacuum sphere finishing chuck and using poweranding, sand off the nubbins, and finish stand.
If the spheres are exotic wood or highly figured wood (burls, curly tiger quilted etc) I finish with oil and wax and Beall buffing. For plainer woods like plain maple, walnut, birch, etc. these may become subjects for carving, texturing, woodburning, coloring or any combination of the above.
Hope this info helps. If you or anyone else has questions, please let me know, only too happy to help.
