>I'm new to Woodcentral, and so I don't know if the question I asked in general messages is picked up here in Turning. On the chance that it is not, and as my question relates to turning I'll repeat it here. I am planning to build a four-poster bed. One section of the posts is contoured and reeded. I know how to lathe/router reeds on straight and tapered sections, but not on contour. I am aware of the Legacy Woodworking machine that can do the job. Any alternative solutions out there?
I couldn't find the jig I used in my router books so it must be in a turning book somewhere. What I used was a flat board on the lathe bed. This had a template attached that was the shape of the turning that needed the reeds.
I made an L shaped router base so the router would cut on center with the axis of the turning. The router was attached to the upright of the L and the bottom of the L tracks against the template.
You'll need a reed cutting bit. I found the bit burned the cherry I used quite easily so I bought a speed control unit to slow the cut down. That was about 10 years ago and i don't know where i saw the plans. I'll try to look for them.
>The solution to your problem is described in a vidoe that I recently reviewed. Here is the review:
Woodturning videos are getting better all of the time and this new one from Al Caton in Florida is very good. It almost makes me want to start fluting my work.
Historically, fluting on turned work has been done with a chisel by hand or with a special rig that allows a router to do the work.Al said when he wanted to try fluting, he tried the chisel method and found that after a couple of hours he had a couple of flutes cut. Not what he had planned at all.
He stopped and did some thinking and came up with a very neat method to do fluting. A method so simple that virtually anyone should be able to do excellent fluting with a very short learning curve.
Al goes into detail on how to build a fluting platform to fit on your lathe and how to fabricate a cutting tool from a simple and inexpensive air driven die grinder that you can purchase from Harbor Freight for under $20.00. If you don�t have an air compressor, he shows how you can do this with a common Dremel tool that almost every woodturner will have in their shop.
After he has shown you the tools that you can easily make, he shows you how to layout the flutes and then how to cut them.
He uses a number of different cutters, carbide, router, and simple sanding drum. The use of a sanding drum really appealed to me because most of us have a small drum sander that we could use.
I�m not really going to give away, Al�s secrets on how he does his fluting, but I am going to try it in the coming months simply because it would be neat to be able to do fluting on some pieces.
Al has done an excellent job on this video and is to be highly commended. Even if you don�t plan to do any fluting it is a very enjoyable video to watch. What Al presents really is, �Simplified Fluting,� that virtually anyone should be able to do with a minimum of investment in tools.
>Good advise on flutes, but a minor point: Reeds ain't flutes, and therefore require different techniques. If you don't want to use a router for flutes, a chisel is not the only alternative, in fact it is a really inefficient alternative. Much better is a scratch beader (which works just as well for reeds). You can put the scratch stock in the same (or a very similar) jig setup as a laminate trimmer.
>I've done reeding on contoured spindles with a scratch beader, as William advises. You don't need a template, the body of the beader tool acts as a guide on the contour of the spindle.
I do it on the lathe, with a special toolrest made of two angle irons welded together vertically, 3 ft long, with about a 2" gap between them. This just happened to come with the lathe (shopmade and welded construction).
The beader itself is nothing but a broom handle, the end sawcut to hold the cutter bit and a screw to clamp it. This is held in a cast iron pulley which fits between the angle rails, but with enough room to move vertically in order to follow a contour. The blade is adjusted on center over the top of the spindle.
With a hand holding the beader on either side of the angle iron rails, you slide the pulley along, holding it firmly against the outer face of the rails and take light cuts in either direction as appropriate.
I was able to do a spindle with about 16 flutes in less than an hour, not really fast but a cheap alternative to a router and special bits.
>Alternately, depending on your disposition or the current contents of your jig stock pile, you can build a jig that slides on the bedways, holding the scratch stock or laminate trimmer or your favorite implement of destruction, at the level of your lathe centers, and use muscle power to control the depth of the cut, into the side of the spindle, instead of the bottom. One reason this might suit a particular application is that the tops of the bedways are often machined to fairly tight tolerances, while the inner surfaces of the gap between the bed ways if often a bit rougher.
Whichever works best for the individual is a toss-up, and depends on more factors than can be practically covered on a text-based forum.
In any case, we'll all be here for more brainstorming, as the constuction of these posts progresses.
>William, that's an even better method than mine since you don't need a special toolrest. Just use the banjo, with the bed clamp removed, to hold the beader tool.