serviette holders

[trout]

Could anyone give me advice on a way to hold blanks for serviette rings whilst turning them please.

[gatiep]

One way would be to hotmelt it onto a sacrificial piece of wood fitted to a face plate. Use a 4 jaw scroll chuck, various ways depending on the jaws you have. Another is to drill the hole on a drill press with a spade ( or preferably Forstner bit ), then turn 2 little tapered plugs that fit into the hole to mount between centers. Another would be to turn the outside between centres, then turn a hole into some wood mounted on a face plate so that the turned serviette ring to be fit in tight ( known as a jam chuck ) Then hollow out from one side. Once done, turn it around and finish off the other end. Another, once drilled, slide it over a thick dowell that you turned between centres so that it sits on tight. Put the dowell with project back between centres and turn.

There you have 5 possibilities. Need any more, I'm sure there are more ways and someone will pop up with a reply.
Enjoy your ring turning!

:)

[Alastair]

Guys

At TAFE we drilled the blanks (32mm) and then turned a mandrel on a piece of timber held in a chuck to this diameter, and 3/4 the length of the blank. Turn so that the blank is a tight jam fit on the mandrel.

Grade your blanks according to the size of the bore, and start with the largest first. Rough to size, mark out design and turn all but the extreme left of the ring. Move the toolrest across the bore, and shear scrape with a gouge, to give the transition from bore to end. Sand outside, and the exposed bore, and finish if desired.

Cut down mandrel to ~1/4 length, and repeat with the rings reversed to complete unfinished edge, and rest of bore.

What I do on my own lathe, is use the 25mm Nova jaws, in expansion mode. Provided you take light cuts, there is no problem. If you wish something more secure, and with less tendency to mark, take a short length of suitable diameter PVC pipe, and split lengthways. Slip this over the jaws, and proceed as above.

FWIW

[chunter]

Hi all,

what Alastair said: this is exactly what Theo ???? demonstrated at Woodturn 2004 earlier this year. He used PVC pipe, split along one side, over shark jaws on a Vicmark chuck. He also coated the outside if the PVC tube with PVC cement to make it less slippery.

At the same demo there was discussion about cutting napkin rings, bangles etc from whole timber versus segmented blanks. The view was that whole timber will give you two sections of the ring with short grain, where there is a greater tendency to split. Whereas a ring turned from a blank made up of say 4 x 90 degree pieces glued together, won't have any short grain, but will have 4 joints.

Either way, be gentle expanding the chuck jaws inside the ring.

cheers

Colin

[Alastair]

Alternatively, if you have the size of timber, drill the bore ALONG the grain, so that when you are turning on the mandrel, the grain runs along the lathe bed, as in spindle turning.

Then there is no short grain area.

Avannappyxmasall

[rsser]

Wot they said!

Once was commissioned to do a set out of different Oz timbers. Turned parallel with the grain; mounted blanks in shark jaws, sized and shaped the right side, drilled out to past where the left side would end, finished the inside, parted off, turned a spigot on the blank still in the jaws onto which the right side was jammed, turned and finished the outside. Cleaned up the finish on the inside.

Only trick was to drill slowly with the dense desert timbers as the heat can discolour the timber. Oh, and use a HSS saw-tooth bit!