Hand Thread Chasing Jigs

[Kenny]

I enjoy making boxes and would like to get into making screw on boxes. there are professional jigs for a few hundred dollars but I was wondering if I can make my own jigs- has anyone ever attempted this. does anyone have a draft on the way to make it. do you know of any magazines that have blue prints of such jigs. I don't know where to start. :

 

[hockenbery]

There are three ways I know of to cut threads on wood.

1. Traditional hand chasing which is a technique of synchronizing the advance of a hand held thread cutting tool with the slow rotation of the lathe. The trick is to cut a thread with the first tooth to contact the wood that comes around to engage the next tooth in the cutting tool. With repeated motions you strike a thread and the tool sort of feeds itself. These tools come in pairs and are more like $40-$65 a pair. Fortunately these are much more difficult to describe than they are to use.

2. The Bonnie Klein thread cutting jig. A cutter something like a router bit is mounted in the head stock and the box parts are mounted in the jig which rotates and advances it against the cutter to make the thread.

3. tap and dies. These are probably too small a diameter and too course a thread for boxes. They work well for things like a gavel handle. A faceplate screwed onto wooden tenon will cut threads like a die.

Most woods don’t thread really well with any method. Hand chasing is best done with woods like Boxwood and Blackwood. I’ve gotten some good results with dogwood and some holly. Many turners will use inserts of Blackwood or boxwood to cut the thread on.
The Bonnie Klein method will give decent results on many hardwoods. Any of the techniques may produce some torn or partly broken threads.

Hope this helps,
AL

 

[john lucas]

Kenny
Fred Holder wrote a book on cutting threads in wood. I'm don't remember the actual tittle but he covers virtually every method used to cut threads from tap and die and hand chasing to different powered cutters.
I've watched Willard Baxter cut threads using the jig the www.bestwoodtools.com sells. It works great. I'm not sure the differences between it and the Bonnie Klein thread cutter.

 

[Jean Michel]

Home made Threading jig...

Hi Kenny,

You can have a look on my humble site to see what I ended up making for a threading jig. The two threads I can make are 8 and 13 TPI with it. It is made out of wood and uses a router as a thread cutter with a cheap 60° cutter from KBC Tools with a 3/8" shank and 3/4" cutter size, the 1" model has a more standard 1/2" shank, sorry, I could not find a source for a 1/4" shank cutter...

I thought I could of used an old B&D router I had with a 1/4" chuck but as 1/4" cutters were unavailable I decided to modify the jig to take the PC 690 model of router but, I was gladly surprised, both routers are the same size so I subtituted the PC and the jig works nicely for me... I am using 1" 8TPI spindle size chucks on it

Source of different articles on thread cutting jigs are given on my site under the picture of the jig...

Have fun,

Jean.

My humble site:
http://www.jeanmichel.org