Lathe Duplicator

Re: Lathe Duplicator

John Lucas

>Mike

Are you now turning them without the Duplicator? I tried a couple of duplicators my friends had and decided the finish was so poor that I spent more time sanding the spindles than I did turning them. I now just to it hand with a bunch of calipers handy. I've always wondered if there was a better duplicator with bits that cut cleaner. All the commercial shops around here have power duplicators that cut with a spinning cutter.

Re: Lathe Duplicator

Mike Ellington From the Arch City

>John,

As I didn�t really look into it I'm sure that there are some really expensive duplicators.

His honor Norm on the New Yankee workshop has a Delta duplicators that work great at least on the show.

Re: Lathe Duplicator

Mike Ellington From the Arch City

>To answer your question.

No I'm doing by hand.

Re: Lathe Duplicator

John Lucas

>Mike

That's why I first looked into duplicators. I saw Norm doing it and I had a friend who makes rolling pins and he uses a duplicator. However after trying his duplicator, I think it was a Vega, I noticed that I could turn his rolling pins just as fast and with a much better surface, meaning no tearout, by hand.

Then another friend had one for sale, don't remember the brand on that one. We tried turning spindles and I couldn't get any really sharp details and had bad tearout on the bottom of coves and top of beads. Not horrible you could sand it out but that takes time and softens all the details.

I found that with a little practice I was turning the spindles just as fast and much cleaner.

Re: Lathe Duplicator

John Lucas

>I forgot to mention. I went to Berea KY and watched them do production turning using a template and a router attached to the lathe. That worked excellently but you were limited on the details. I imagine if you had 2 or 3 routers with different bit profiles you could probably do it but you might have to change templates. Still it would work and if you were doing high volume I would consider it. John