Tools, jigs and accessories | Syzygy Woodworks

December 21, 2009

Chuck Reversing Adapter

Every now and then I buy a tool/gadget that takes a time consuming process and just simplifies it. Yesterday I picked up a chuck reversing adapter from my local Woodcraft, and is it going to make life easy!

A chuck reversing adapter is used to take a turning that is mounted in a chuck on the headstock and rotate it and mount it on the tail stock so that you can align or center it correctly while mounting on a vacuum chuck or donut chuck prior to finishing the bottom of the piece. Or to put it more simply, it is a piece of metal with a morse taper on one side and a thread on the other that matches your chuck.

I normally don’t have any problems reversing a vessel with a wide rim, especially when using my donut chuck. However, for pieces with a narrow rim, like hollow forms, I have been struggling with alignment when reversing. The chuck reversing adapter has solved that. The following pictures illustrate how it is used.

Here is a hollow form that I’ve finished hollowing and am now ready to reverse and finish off the bottom. Without removing the piece from the chuck, I unscrew the chuck from the headstock and set it aside.

I then mount the back piece of my donut chuck to the headstock. You can see in the above image that I have attached a piece of scrap wood to the center and have turned it to a cone shape. Then I attached a couple of pieces of self adhesive fun foam. This cone will go into the mouth of the hollow form.

I then mounted the chuck reversing adapter into the tail stock and threaded the chuck onto it. Note, the chuck reversing adapter is not a live center! It does not rotate in the tail stock as it has no bearings. It is a temporary method to hold the chuck in the tail stock in alignment with the headstock. Don’t start the lathe with it in place, you’ll ruin your whole day!

The tail stock was then slid forward till the workpiece was almost touching the donut chuck. Then I locked the tail stock in place and advanced the spindle using the hand wheel until the workpiece was snug against the donut chuck, taking care not to crush it. The front piece of the donut chuck was then secured in place with the bolts.

I then loosened the chuck on the tenon of the hollow form, and withdrew the tail stock. The donut chuck held the piece securely and correctly aligned.

I then put a live center in the tail stock and brought it up to the work piece in order to turn the bulk of the tenon off, leaving just a small nub. It’s a good practice to support the work piece whenever you can using the tail stock.

The last little nub was removed with the tail stock out of the way and then the bottom of the piece was sanded.

December 15, 2009

Spindle and tenon gauge

I was getting tired of reaching for my calipers and setting them to my chuck diameter every time I needed to turn a tenon. The alternative was trying to “guesstimate” the diameter needed and very often I would turn the tenon to small. So I made a spindle and tenon gauge.

I have a set of forstner bits and they go from 1/4″ to 2 1/8″ diameter, in 1/8″ increments. I figured that while I was busy making the gauge, I might as well go ahead and include all these diameters.

I used a piece of 1/4″ hardboard. It was thicker than my parting tool, so I ran it through my drum sander a couple of times until it was just slightly thinner than my parting tool. This is probably not necessary for most applications, but I thought it may be useful occasionally when I wanted to make a parting cut in the middle of a piece and not have to widen it in order to insert the gauge.

Then I drew two lines down each side of the hardboard, just over one inch from each edge. I set my drill fence so the center of the forstner bit was positioned over one of the lines. Then, using a scrap piece of wood as a backer board, I started drilling holes, from big to small, down one side and up the other side.

When all the holes were drilled, I set my table saw fence to the line I had previously drawn, and with two passes, cut all the circles in half.

The gauge now hangs within easy reach of my lathe and is perfect for sizing tenons and checking spindle diameters. A quick, easy and cheap solution that makes my work flow at the lathe easier 🙂

If you have a hint or tip feel free to share in the comments section.

November 25, 2009

Chatter Tool Results

I finally got a chance to play with the chatter tool I made. My initial experiments were pretty disappointing. The tool was “screeching” as it is supposed to, but I only seemed to be able to put spiral grooves on the test piece. My first thought was that the blade was not thick enough and I was getting too much “deflection” and not enough “chatter”. I had used on old jigsaw blade, so I took an old sawzall blade and cut and shaped that. Even though it was wider, and offer less give, I was still just getting spiral grooves.

So I took the two blades back to the grinder and ground a very slight bevel on the edges. More importantly I rounded over the point of the blade so that instead of coming to a sharp point it came to a blunt, slightly round point. Immediately I started to see improvements! Both the jig saw blade and the sawzall blade worked great, although they did produce different patterns.

There are no shortage of patterns you can get with the chatter tool. Whether any of them are repeatable is open to debate though! A number of variables affect the pattern.

The amount of the blade sticking out the tool.
The distance from the tool rest to the work piece.
The speed of the lathe.
How hard you push the tool into the work piece.
How quickly you move the cutting edge across the work piece.
How many times you move the cutting edge across the work piece.
The angle the cutting edge is presented.

The image below shows some examples. I colored the patterns with a black permanent marker so they would show better in the image.

A chatter tool is used primarily in end grain, so applications include embellishments on box lids, spinning tops etc. The chatter tool will work better on hardwoods than softwoods.

After spending an hour or so playing with the tool, I feel the most important variables are lathe speed and distance of the tool rest from the work piece. For the most part the tool is presented so that the blade is horizontal and the handle is closer to you than the blade. The tool rest is about 4 to 6″ from the workpiece and lathe speed is around 1000 rpm. The blade is pushed into the wood and then pulled from the center to the edge. Rotating the tool slightly counter clockwise will change the pattern achieved, but it will also cause the tool to move towards the edge of the work piece a lot faster!! I found lathe speeds between 750 and 1800 worked with an optimum range between 1000 and 1200.

November 12, 2009August 28, 2019

Homemade Chatter Tool

I’ve been wanting to try some different embellishment techniques, one of which was chatter work. However I kept on balking at the price of a new chatter tool. I decided to make my own. It cost me $3.00 and a hour or two on a Sunday afternoon.

I got a 1/2″ x 10″ nipple from the plumbing department at the home improvement store, along with a 3/4″ long 1/4 20 bolt. The rest of the materials I used were in the shop already including a used jigsaw blade.

I mounted the pipe between centers on the lathe and after a bit of sanding it was nice and shiny. I then cut the threads off one end and drilled and tapped a 1/4 20 thread about 3/4″ back from that end.

The next step was to mount a cherry pen blank in a chuck and turn it down to 1/2″ so that if fit inside the pipe. I only turned down the first couple of inches, and then put it in a vise and cut it lengthwise. This off cut was then glued into the pipe with CA glue, the bolt served as a clamp.

After turning the block of wood to be used as a handle round, I drilled it to fit the the OD of the pipe. Unfortunately, the OD of the pipe was around 13/16″ and the only forstner bits I had were 3/4″ and 7/8″. So I drilled with the 3/4″ and then widened the hole using a square edge scraper until the pipe fit inside. The image below show the handle shaped and sanded, just prior to being parted off.

I’m playing with dyes at the moment, so I applied a red dye to the handle and then a couple of coats of shellac. While I was waiting for the shellac to dry, I ground the teeth off the jigsaw blade, shaped the point of the blade and bent it as in the image below.

The completed tool, ready for testing! Did I mention how nice and shiny it is!

I’ll show some pictures in a future post of the results from the tool. I also have a couple more jig saw blades and some sawzall blades. I plan on experimenting a bit with the different blades and profiles and see what sort of results I get.

If you’ve made a chatter tool let me know what type of blade and profile you got the best results with by posting a comment. Thanks.

February 22, 2009April 11, 2013

Make a Donut Chuck

I needed to make a donut chuck so that I could mount a 12″ bowl on my lathe and finish off the bottom of the bowl. I have a set of cole jaws for my jaw chuck, but they will only expand 10″.

You can click on any of the images to see a larger version.

The first step was to take a 16″ x 16″ x 3/4″ piece of plywood and find the center. I marked out three circles of 9″, 15″ and 15 3/4″ diameter. I laid out eight points on the 15″ diameter circle and drilled 5/16″ holes and inserted 1/4-20 tee nuts at each of these points.

I took another piece of 16″ x 16″ x 3/4″ plywood and placed it below the first piece. Using a transfer punch, I transferred the centers of the eight tee nuts to the second piece of plywood and then drilled 1/4″ holes at each of these points. I bolted the two pieces together using 1 1/2″ 1/4-20 bolts and cut the two pieces of plywood round, just outside of the 15 3/4″ circle. I used my jigsaw to do this as the workpiece would not have sat flush on my band saw table and I did not want the heads of the bolts to scratch my band saw table. As an aside, I used the new Xtra-Clean (T308B) blades from Bosch and was impressed at how easily they cut and how clean the cut was on both the top and bottom of the plywood.

Using my center finder I located a face plate I have dedicated to this donut chuck and attached it securely to the first piece of plywood.

I mounted the face plate and plywood pieces on the lathe and turned both pieces perfectly round. I marked a 9″ diameter circle on the front piece and drilled a 1/.4″ hole through both pieces using a drill chuck in the tail stock. I took the piece of the lathe and drilled a 5/16″ hole 3/8″ deep in the back piece of plywood and inserted a 1/4″ tee nut in that hole. Then I bolted both pieces together suing another 1 1/2″ 1/4-20 bolt.

I remounted the piece on the lathe and made a mark on the sides of the plywood pieces to help align the two pieces. Using a parting tool, I cut the 9″ diameter circle out of the front piece of plywood. I cut at an angle from the center out and took care to make sure I did not cut too deeply into the back piece of plywood. Because of the tapered cut and the center bolt the internal circle did not come loose. I had to remove all 9 bolts to take it out.

Lastly I cut a piece of high friction router pad cloth and using spray adhesive attached it to the inside face of the front section. This will help to both hold and protect the surface of the bowl.

The tee nut inserted in the center of the back piece can be used to mount a scrap piece of plywood to. A tenon that matches the internal diameter of a bowl can then be turned onto that scrap piece enabling you to mount the bowl in the donut chuck directly on center.

In my excitement at how easily the bowl mounted and how smooth and true it ran, I forgot to take a picture of the mounted bowl before I finished off the bottom. Here is a shot of the bowl mounted in the donut chuck, with the bottom finished and sanded.

February 21, 2009April 11, 2013

Center Finder

I have a project coming up where I need to be able to mount a face plate accurately to a work piece. So I made a center finder for my face plate. You can buy really nice ones made out of aluminum but it took me about ten minutes to make this one.

I first mounted a scrap piece of wood between centers and turned it round. I then mounted it in a jaw chuck and brought up the tailstock for support.

I measured the internal diameter of the face plate using calipers and then turned the piece so that the face plate fit snugly around the piece.

I mounted a drill chuck in the tail stock and drilled a 1/4″ hole as deep as I could into the piece. Then I parted it off.

To use the center finder, I take the 1/4″ punch from my transfer punch set and place the point on the exact center of my workpiece. I then slide the center finder over the transfer punch and slide the face plate over the center finder. The face plate is now accurately positioned over the center of the work piece and can be screwed to the work piece.

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