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Turning a round ball???

John Terefenko

John Terefenko

Joined
Oct 7, 2009
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I remember seeing somewhere someone made a jig to turn round balls. Can some one point me in the right direction. Has anyone done this and do you have any photos??? What are the problems one would face doing this??? How do you turn them at the correct size??? Is there a method to set the jig up??? Thanks in advance.
 
The jigs are basically a scraper cutter moved through an arc on a pivot point.
They work best on real hard wood that scraps well.

I turn a lot of balls with a side ground bowl gouge.
You can turn a surprisingly accurate ball with a octagon layout.
With a bit of practice you can turn a round ball within a 1/16" of a desired diameter.
And turn them faster than you can with a jig and a cleaner surface.

Barbara Crockett has an article on turning spheres the AAW web site
http://www.woodturner.org/community/youth/projects/Sphere.pdf

It is on the youth page but think of those articles for kinds from 8 to 80.
I've seen lots of raw beginners turn a spheres in workshops using techniques similar to Barbara.

My Ball layout. ( for a small ball use .4 x diameter for the faces it is close enough and easier to set up)
http://aaw.hockenbery.net/SphereDescription.pdf

Turning the Ball.
http://aaw.hockenbery.net/turning the ball.pdf


Have fun
Al
 
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I turned a number of balls a year or so ago using basically Barbara Crockett's method from AAW. It was easy and fun (I actually tried one just because it looked interesting and ended up turning a handful because it was fun). I was less particular than she about getting exact round early leaving more 'ears' which rounded out well by just rotating the balls in the cup holders and turning a few more times. Enjoy.
 
This is great. I got lots of reading material along with visual material. It looks abit trickier than I thought. Thanks everyone.
 
A lot of things in woodturning can seem baffling at first. Natural edge bowls, balls , making pens.
Once you have done one of seen one there is no mystery.

Another thing about the method Barbara and I use

If you turn bowls and hollow forms
The left side of the ball is the same as turn the outside of a bowl with the opening to the headstock
The rights side of the ball is the same as turning the outside of bowl with the opening to the tailstock.

Turning balls this way using a bowl gouge will improve the curves in you bowls and hollow forms.

You might take a look at the 2010 AAW Techniques I video. Maybe your club has it it their library.
The ball in ball demo show the ball layout, turning the ball, and hollowing the ball.
most people buy the Video for the John Jordan hollowing and Graeme Priddle vessels of the South Pacific demos.
There are three other nice demos too.

Al
 
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While turning them by hand is a great skill to develop, there are several jigs that have been developed to turn them. If you do a google search for "sphere turning jigs" you will find several including;

Lindsay lathe tools -sphere turning jig,
Vermec turning jig

Additionally, in the David Sprigett book "Woodturning Wizardy" David shows how to make a homemade one from wood, others have published similiar designs online.
 
John, if you do them by eye in cups they go pretty fast and are round enough. Use dry wood or they wont stay round. Depending on your spindle size you can get a beall tap and make your cups that screw right on the spindle. They have 1 and 1 1/4 by 8 taps. I have a Oneway 2436 so had a friend tap me some hard wood blanks for the tailstock. I bought a #2 morse taper live center with a 1by8 thread from Penn State. Works great on most lathes. That way I take it with me to demo balls. Since I had my oneway spindle modified into a 1 1/2 8 thread I got an adapter that goes from the headstock to 1by8 thread. Christian Burchards method is the one I modied for myself. After the ball is rough shaped between centers I keep the end grain always facing out in the cups. That way I make pull cuts from either side of the ball. I find its easier for me. And I use a spindle gouge for it. I keep a number of sizes of cups. They do wear out and need reshaped untill they get tossed. A trick is to leave a bit of rounded edge instead of sharp on each cup so they wont dig into the ball so much. Some balls go easy and some will give you nothing but grief. I have turned many thousands of them at this point so have gotten pretty good. But our medium is still wood. Like butter or rock. Smooth or more tearout than you thought could happen. No matter how sharp the tool and fine the cut. If I get five or six in a row that fight me I move on to other work.
 
When I first learned to do them with the cup chuck and turning away the shadow method My spheres got quite small. I would turn and there would be a shadow so I'd turn that away. Then I would rotate the piece and do the same again but each time I got another shadow showing an out of round piece. So my 3" ball ended up being about 1 1/4".
The trick is to turn no more than just the shadow. Sneak up on it. I also found that the cup chucks need to be fairly accurate or each time you rotate the ball it shows another shadow which is due to the chucks being sloppy.
 
Are there any links to a homemede jig??? Has anyone made a homemade shere turning jig??? Thanks
 
john lucas said:
When I first learned to do them with the cup chuck and turning away the shadow method My spheres got quite small. I would turn and there would be a shadow so I'd turn that away. Then I would rotate the piece and do the same again but each time I got another shadow showing an out of round piece. So my 3" ball ended up being about 1 1/4".
The trick is to turn no more than just the shadow. Sneak up on it. I also found that the cup chucks need to be fairly accurate or each time you rotate the ball it shows another shadow which is due to the chucks being sloppy.
Click to expand...

Turning away the tenons has been my nemesis too. My Un-Golf Ball began its life about 4" diameter. After almost destroying the shape, I used it as a new blank to turn a smaller ball - almost perfect except for the tenons. To remove the tenons, I used a Dremel router base with a 1/4" router bit. I set the maximum depth by resting the round hole in the router base at an accurate location on the smooth ball, so that the bit barely touched the good surface. I retracted the bit to nibble at the tenons, rechecking the depth frequently. Still needs sanding, of course.

For a much smaller ball, the bit most likely won't retract far enough, so I'd either make an auxiliary base, or put shims within the router base (probably more accurate centering).

Both the ball and the router hand-held, and it's not as scary as it seems.
 
Most of my fun is turning away the nibs. Also sharpens my sense of touch for turning natural edge bowls.
Cutting them with a hand saw works fine. Can be extremly dangerous to cut the with any power saw.


Turning the nibs
You need good light and a good background a sheet of computer paper laid on the ways will work wonders in providing a good background.

Light cuts an sharp tool. I am 100% with john Always sneak up on the curve.
Lot easier to make More cuts on a high spot than to cut the whole form down to match the low spot we make by cutting too aggressively.

Have fun
Al
 
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Yep, try as we might, you can't cut it bigger or longer. For some beginers a story board (paper cut out of a half sphere) is also a helpful guide.
 
The sanding of the balls can also contribute to good shape. I've forgotten his name but a demonstrator from New Zeland showed us that using a hollow cylinder (a piece of pipe works) smaller than the sphere as a backup for sandpaper will remove off all of the high spots. Remember that a cylinder placed on a sphere makes contact along a great circle. By keeping the sandpaper/cylinder moving a near perfect sphere can be achieved. Reorient the ball frequently between the cup centers and don't over sand.

John Giem
 
John Giem said:
I've forgotten his name but a demonstrator from New Zeland showed us that using a hollow cylinder (a piece of pipe works) smaller than the sphere as a backup for sandpaper will remove off all of the high spots.
John Giem
Click to expand...

John, are you thinking of Soren Berger? He showed me the trick with the ring to check roundness. He also has a caliper for turning spheres that makes the layout really easy.
 
Bob Nice jig. I have seen sphere cutting jigs made from wood. They seemed to work well. Once you turn a few spheres they go pretty fast without the jigs but I've always wanted to build a jig.
I have kept sketches of the commercial ones that are online. I like Bob's and will probably incorporated some freatures in the one I finally build one of these days.
 
Bob

Thanks
I like it and will probably build something close to this. Has alot of great possibilities to it. Thanks for posting.
 
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