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Threading Tools

W

Wilford Bickel

Joined
Apr 29, 2004
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Location
Alpine, AL
After attending Earnie Newman's demo at the Southern States Symposium this past April, I knew threading tools were on my list of must have items! After looking at Earnie's tools, I went on a search for threading dies that could be used for making the tools. I found a set of pipe threading taps and dies on sale at HF for $9.99. These worked perfectly.

I first took the die and using my 4 inch hand held grinder I "cut" the die into individual thread sections. I then used a bench grinder and held these sections in a pair of vise grips and leveled them up. These pieces were then able to be brazed onto a piece of 3/16 inch flat steel. Before brazing make sure you have the angle of the teeth pointed in the right direction to give you right hand threads. The teeth in the die are actually cut at an angle such as - / - you must get this angle right or you will be cutting the thread backwards or not cutting threads at all (DAMHIKT!).

Once the die pieces were brazed onto the steel it was just a matter then of making some handles from some scrap cherry. The pipe set include 14 tpi and 18 tpi dies so that was the 2 sizes of threaders we produced. I actually made a set of each size for myself and one set of each for another turner. Total cost for 4 sets of threaders was about $40.
 

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Well done. I like the idea. Did you reharden them or anything after all that grinding and cutting? they might be strong enough to cut wood anyway I just thought that it might be easy to overheat them and soften the edge.
 
John,
Glad you asked! I forgot to mention that while I was doing the cutting and grinding I had a container of water at my work station to allow me to cool them when I started seeing "blueing" appear (same color as grinding our HSS turning tools). As the dyes would have to be a hard tool steel for cutting metal I have seen no problem from any weakening from the heat of cutting or brazing. I did allow them to slowly air cool after brazing and this may have helped them reharden. Still plenty hard for wood and easy to resharpen as Earnie showed just by honing the top edge.
 
Pipe threads are tapered

Aloha Wilford,
Nice job on your threading tools.We had Ernie here earlier this year also, and he is a hoot. I just loved his turning of that cob of corn.As you noticed, pipe threads are tapered at the rate of 3/4" per foot of length, which comes out to about 1 1/2* from the centerline. So, if you notice that your threads are slightly tapered, you will need to hold your handle slightly askew to correct that. But, if you made your handle shanks parallel to the teeth on the dies, no problem. Question, were the dies HSS or carbon steel?
Doug
:cool2:
 
Doug While chasing threads Your dragging the tool during the cut from end to end so I would think you would get the same thread throughout. The tapered pipe thread comes about because you only thread down to a certain point on the die. I've been known to be wrong before however, sometimes you have to hit my head pretty hard to straighten me out.
 
John,
Have you ever tried threading wood? The clearance groove will not be wide enough for the entire width of the tool to pass entirely through,so if the tool is held at an angle, there will be some taper. It is quite difficult to get a straight thread using hand held tools anyway. Remember, that you don't just present the tool over the whole width, as that will just cut grooves. Moving the tool at the correct rate(pitch) of the thread even before making contact is difficult enough without the teeth at an angle. Getting a single start every time is a different story DAMHIKT. The good thing about threading wood, is that there are no specs and you can go as loose as needed to cover your "sins".
The main thing is to "have fun doing it".
Aloha
Doug
 
Keep Asking!

If you keep asking questions I may be able to remember all the little details about making these threaders. After cutting when I ground the thread units square one of the things I did was grind off the "partial teeth". The die had tapered teeth up to a point to allow the unit to start threading metal. As we needed only the full length teeth for threading wood, I ground off the partial teeth making the unit brazed onto the steel shafts a good square of full length teeth. These were then set square to the steel when brazed. With a release groove cut into your wood they then can give you a thread that is cut the full length of your male or female wood part. Hope this makes sense - if not keep asking and I will keep trying to explain.

I think the box is still in the shop and I wll try to see if it says what the metal was that the dies were made from. Remember these were cheap imports but I will look and try to find out and report back.
 
nice tools

nice work on the tools I tried hand threading and after working up to getting nice looking but poorly mated threads after trying every day for a month, I said screw it (pun intended) and bucked up and bought a bonnie klein jig only to find threaded boxes don't sell nearly as well as my non threaded ones.
 
Wilford,

Great idea and execution. I doubt you can beat the price you paid but I wonder if you could speed up the making process? By purchasing the replacement die cutter "teeth" from Rigid tools, it should eliminate lots of grinding and cutting which in turn would reduce most of the worries about removing any temper, etc. Just a thought because it seems I use more and more shop time to build jigs, fixtures, etc and less and less actually turning.
 
Jake,

We hunted for a source for just the "teeth" but the two of us could not find anywhere we could buy such at a reasonable price. If you know of a source please pass it on as you are correct it would sure make it easier.
 
Talk about being right.......................

Wilford Bickel said:
Jake,

We hunted for a source for just the "teeth" but the two of us could not find anywhere we could buy such at a reasonable price. If you know of a source please pass it on as you are correct it would sure make it easier.
Click to expand...

Wilford, did a quick online search, whoa. Prices are just a tadd high for the name brand items. A set four H.S.S. Rigid replacement dies are about $136+. Four alloy replacements are $90+. I'm gonna keep looking though. If I find anything I'll let you know.
 
Doug I've just started to learn but I have had to collect some harder wood and dry it if I'm going to be successful. I cut some threads but they are nasty looking because the wood simply would not support the cut. I got some reasonable threads in Cocobolo but I blew the project on the last few cuts.
I was basing my hyposthesis on a mental image of how the cutter travels along the wood as the thread is being cut. I'm still having trouble visualizing it. I guess what I was thinking was a really long thread, say 2". If you had curved theader as long as you could get 2 teeth in there wouldn't the thread be roughly the same the full length? I see what you are saying. If the threads are 1/2" long with say 5 threads per inch and you are cutting a thread that is 1/2" long you would be cutting with the tapered threads and the finished product would be tapered. Does that make sense.
I guess what I'm thinking is if you take a pipe theader that is 1/2" thick and you thead a pipe for 3" the top 2 1/2" will have the same thead depth. The bottom 1/2 will be tapered.
sorry sometimes I think too much. I need to just do it.
 
Geometric threading dies on e-bay

Aloha everyone,
What you are really looking for is called Geometric Threading Dies, and here is a link to an e-bay auction for 5 sets(4 in each set) with opening bid of $97.
That comes out to less then $5 each die. Sets like this cost over $100. per set DAMHIKT. They are all 3/8-16 dies. 16 tpi is a good pitch for wood. Maybe someone here would like to buy it and resell, or do it in their club. No affiliation, just trying to help out
Doug
Link

http://cgi.ebay.com/Geometric-Dies-...ryZ31484QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem
 
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