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Ornamental Turners in Central Ohio

RichColvin

RichColvin

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Location
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I am a getting ready to embark into Ornamental Turning & am looking for people in the Columbus / central Ohio area willing to share knowledge. I am looking to build my own system and looking for advice.

Rich
 
Rich,

1. I suggest you contact the AAW chapter : "0rnamental turners international"
http://www.woodturner.org/members/?id=23094310

This is an chapter of AAW dedicated to ornamental turning. Similar chapters exist for
Segmenting, Pens, and Women. The ornamental and other groups usually have a meeting at the AAW symposium and demonstrations or panels devoted to their interest.

2. You might want to download the spring 2007 AAW journal. Jon Magill has an article on building a Rose engine lathe.
 
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Jon Magill's MDF Rose engine is one source, another you might want to look at is Capt. Eddie Castelin's "Lathezilla". A friend and I built two of these with some modifications, they work very well.
As suggested above,The Ornamental Turners International web-site is another source.
 
Speaking o f ornamental turning, here are a few pictures from one of the workshops John Magill had at his place on Whidbey Island, Wa. Not exactly roughing it in John's shop.

Look carefully and you'll see a number or ornamental turning machines.

John is in the orange tee shirt far left in the first pic. Bonnie Klein is sitting facing away in the last picture working on a machine with an overhead driven cutting system.


magill-1.JPG magill-2.JPG magill-3.JPG
 
I just took a look at the OTI site which I used to frequent. Not very much activity these days.

My interest in OT was in using a CNC milling machine to do the work. It was the 2004 meet in the Seattle area that really got my interest. For the instant gallery I had a few sample pieces. They got a lot of attention until the lookers were told they were done on a CNC machine, once they heard that most dropped the pieces like hot potatoes.

It can be challenging to set up OT machines to do the more tricky cuts. That challenge may be what draws people to OT. In some respects the use of CNC takes that challenge away although it does add the challenge of getting the CNC machine to do non-traditional type CNC work. One main difference is with the CNC you can visualize the results on the computer prior to doing a test cut..

A gallery in Seattle that usually had at least a couple OT pieces hasn't had any for what seems like a couple years now. Is OT losing interest?
 
The OTI Symposium in Denver, Co last Sept was well attended. Plenty of activity, although not much is being discussed on the forum. This was my first chance to actually see the machines in action, rather than just looking at pictures or videos on line.

Here is a link to a post from last year on making a spring loaded pin for the Alisam indexing wheel, and a few posts later on making a counting index to save time and reduce errors.

http://www.aawforum.org/community/index.php?threads/alisam-indexing-system.5834/#post-112368
 
I find it interesting that I posted this same question on the OTI forum and have received no replies there.

Thank you all for your responses. I really appreciate them.

Kind regards,
Rich
 
Richard Coers said:
That was my post on the IAP. Glad you liked the design and made it work for you.
Click to expand...
Richard,

Yep, it is indeed your design I used. I rotated the headstock 180 degrees so the rosettes are over the bed, and turn in the outboard position. This allows me room for probably 18 rosettes, though I only have 12 on now.

Thank you for the idea !

Kind regards,
Rich
 
Great Idea! I thought I'd seen just about every design and video on rose engines, but somehow missed this one... I have a Carba-tec mini lathe that would be perfect for this. Too late to start over now, I've been working on one since last fall, using a 5C spin index for the headstock, a Delta cross slide, and the Sherline milling attachment for the cutting frame. I bought a couple of rosettes from Jon Magill to get started, will have to make more as time allows. To save space, it mounts on my PM3520b.

Still a work in progress, but here is what it looks like so far...

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I watched the videos again tonight Rich. I'd suggest you have a little too much pressure on the wiper. The motion is just slightly jerky, and in the video of all the rosettes, I hear the drive motor straining a little. I found that I barely had to be off a neutral balance to get an extremely smooth action. Just a suggestion, you may completely satisfied with your result.
 
Richard,

Thank you for the insight. I will try that !

Kind regards,
Rich
 
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