What’s on your lathe?

[David Anliker]

something different. a Styrofoam cannon, five feet by 14" at the bottom.
museum has received 19 cannons from a river dredge project and wants to display them. at 1200 lbs. each they don't move easy.
so, make a light sample for a display rack till they decide how. Will be covered and painted.
started as 20 x 20 block five feet long on a 3x3 wood spindle. used a chain saw to reduce it then a skew to shape it and sandpaper to finish.
a blower took care of clean up.

 

[Dan Wiggin]

something different. a Styrofoam cannon, five feet by 14" at the bottom.
museum has received 19 cannons from a river dredge project and wants to display them. at 1200 lbs. each they don't move easy.
so, make a light sample for a display rack till they decide how. Will be covered and painted.
started as 20 x 20 block five feet long on a 3x3 wood spindle. used a chain saw to reduce it then a skew to shape it and sandpaper to finish.
a blower took care of clean up.

Very cool!

 

[Dan Wiggin]

Cored my Mahogany blanks from yesterday. Ready for the anchor seal!

 

[John K Jordan]

No template on cardboard.

If you want to duplicate a shape a template is ok. I made one before turning a bunch of eggs. We have chickens (and peacocks, and guineas, etc.) and I've seen a lot of turned eggs that didn't look egg quite right. So I picked what looked to me like a "typical" egg from the chicken house. (Note that eggs naturally have some variation.)

After considering some methods to make a template I mounted a tiny, bright LED light high on the ceiling, put the egg on a piece of paper, then traced the shadow outline with a pencil. Cut that out and first made a template.



Here's a wooden chicken egg and a wooden peafowl egg:



HOWEVER, for me profile templates can be a pain to use compared to a story stick: Measure the distance of the key features of a model from one end and make marks on a thin, flat piece of wood.

Can keep one prototype at hand and set the caliper to the key diameters after marking the positions on the rounded blank. Or shape one edge of the flat story stick to set the calipers directly at each key. If making only one or two duplicates it's quicker to just write down the diameters and set the sizing caliper from a scale or something. That's what I did for a one-of-a-kind custom handle for a friend who tunes my piano.



This is the type of cheap caliper I use for sizing any spindle since the jaws are thin and fit easily into a parting tool groove. (The lower one does not yet have the corners on the jaws rounded over.)



JKJ