very challenging skinny spindles

Comp wood?

Re: Comp wood? *LINK*

john lucas

Sorry. It used to be called comp wood. Now it's called cold bend. The website is below. They take a piece of wood, heat and soak it, then crush with hydraulic pressure. When they remove the pressure it expands back to 80 percent of it's normal length. This leave the cells overlapped so you can bend the wood much further before it breaks.

I started this project like 10 years ago. Tried every bending technique out there and it simply wouldn't work. Then life got in the way and the project got put on the back burner. Comp wood, or cold bend wood then hit the market. I started playing with it and started the project again. Again life got in the way.

Now I'm back at it again. I'll find out tomorrow if I can finish this project with bent wood. If not I'll just resign myself to having to carve the entire thing. One way or the other this project is going to get done within the next 6 weeks or less.


http://www.puretimber.com/small-orders-and-samples/

Re: very challenging skinny spindles

philip f Duffy

Have you tried feeding the spindles out of the jaws of a chuck an inch or 4 at a time and that way avoiding the whip affect? pfd

Re: very challenging skinny spindles

John C Lucas

When i have more trouble than this it is what i do. I made.a custom tail center support so that end has a little support.

Re: very challenging skinny spindles

john lucas

a quick sample test.

Re: very challenging skinny spindles

Joe Fleming

Maybe spoke shaving it round?

Re: very challenging skinny spindles

john lucas

I'm able to turn them fortunately but I have a tiny spokeshave I got many years ago. Only used it once after tuning it up. I have to make tinier spindles for the other part of this project so that may be an option. do I need to build a really tiny shaving horse.

spokeshave and scraper

John K Jordan

I used a small spokeshave once on a rotating thin spindle. (my favorite thing to turn!) It worked fine but the skew did too. Might be good for someone afraid of the skew...

Another thing that worked on a flexible thin spindle was a little cabinet scrapers, held diagonally and moved down the length while spinning. In that case it tamed the flexing and vibration that particularly soft piece of wood gave me with even the skew.

I've had several people ask if I shaped a particular thin tapered spindle with sandpaper. Ha! I remember watching a video on YouTube where someone did that.

JKJ

Hunter mini hercules

John C Lucas

I turned 4.more this morning. Tried several tools. Used the thompson mark st leger mini roughing gouge sharpened to 45 degree bevel. 3/8" round HSS skew, 1/4" spindle gouge. And the mini Hercules. With the mini Hercules the rouded edge takes a nice small.controled bite. With thise little controlled cuts it takes almost no pressure from your fingers to ack up the cut.

Re: Hunter mini hercules

Mike Stafford

I took a class with my dear departed friend Ed Moore on turning Christmas ornaments. During that class we used sea urchin shells and turned finials and drops that passed through the hollow shells.

He showed us how to use a 1/4" traditional grind bowl gouge to turn thin finials and I still rely upon that method today although I sometimes do find that a spindle gouge works better with some woods.

I have two 1/4" bowl gouges in my arsenal; one has a short grind which I use to clean up torn end grain; the other has a long grind which I find very useful to undercut the rims of the bowls of platter blanks.

The one true adage about woodturning is that there is more than one tool with which you can skin a cat....or something like that.

That's why I have so many tools

john lucas

There are lots of cats, and they each have 9 lives.