I haven't done anything similar but I can say a decent rotary table is a useful tool. I use mine mostly on the milling machine when I want to mill to certain angles.rotary index head

These type of things work best with dense timbers which aren’t always easy to source at a good price.
It is available in the UK but not that common as it is slow growing and expensive as a result. France seems to be the place where it is most abundent so contacts in that country would be useful.I had the impression that Boxwood was common in the UK.
Or is it available but expensive in usable sizes?
Some years ago some turner friends joined forces to source and import a quantity of boxwood to the US, I got a few pieces from that deal, sections of branches (trunks?) 4" or less in diameter. Very tight piths, no cracking. Nice white color. That stuff sure is dense. Haven't turned any yet.
JKJ
Boxwood is very nice and ideal for ornamental turning. As Colin says though it’s not cheap and not often available much over 3” diameter.
I bought some 4” diameter pieces a while ago but by the time I’d turned off the bark and trued it up it was obviously quite a bit smaller.

I built the JaHo and it is interesting to work with . Already had the cross slide vise. And the rest was not expensive.
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Hi Bill.......YES, attaching the chuck to the rotary table is also giving me a BIG pause also. The original JaHo used high density plastic for this piece. The fellow from New Zealand machined it from steel but had a metal lathe. High density plastic is SUPER expensive in large sizes and then they want to sell you several feet of it. Back to the drawing board on this one. What did you finally use may I ask?I had a good look at the JaHo before making my setup pictured above. Admittedly I already had an indexing plate and detent for my lathe. Fixing a wood turning chuck to a small rotary table was something that gave me pause. Also, while using a rotary table gives you lots of potential increments, I was concerned about “loosing my place” part way through the cutting process. Using an indexing plate seemed far less daunting.
I used a small but quite solid cast iron X Y table and I suspect it’s less likely to suffer from vibration than the extruded aluminium table used with the JaHo.
Good luck with your project.![]()
Hi Bill.......YES, attaching the chuck to the rotary table is also giving me a BIG pause also. The original JaHo used high density plastic for this piece. The fellow from New Zealand machined it from steel but had a metal lathe. High density plastic is SUPER expensive in large sizes and then they want to sell you several feet of it. Back to the drawing board on this one. What did you finally use may I ask?

Thanks Colin, that's also where I'm heading. Found a fellow on Etsy that sells lathe chuck wall mount adapters. Sent him a drawing of what I need and he says he can 3D print me one up.Bob, For mine I 3D printed a chuck adapter. I used 75% infil and PETG for the plastic. There are files for the chuck adapters freely available online from sites such as Thingiverse.