Cart before the Horse

**joe greiner** · 28th September 2007, 06:01 AM

A spiral cage with four captive balls.

Most turners would postpone something like this until they had a little more experience under their belts. Believe it or not, this was my first woodturning, although I use the term "woodturning" with some liberty. I made it about 15 years ago.

I didn't have a lathe at the time. I made a couple "bookends" with dead centers ground from threaded rod, T-nuts, locknuts, and washers. The aft ends of the rods are slotted for screwdriver purchase. I mounted the bookends on a plank, secured a piece of firewood on the centers, and put two narrow strips of lath across the top corners between the bookends. With a straight-cutting bit in the router, I inverted the assembly on my router table against the fence. I twisted the wood, and shifted the sled along the fence, to cut a reasonably accurate cylinder. I used a cove bit to form the ends of the cylinder near the bark, and used the straight bit again to square the outer portion of the ends, with a shallow rabbet on the periphery. I might have done the rabbets as a next-to-final operation later; I don't remember exactly.

I laid out helixes to define the parts to be removed. I set the whole affair on my drill press table, and drilled shallow holes in the outermost inch or so with a spade bit. I did most of the secondary excavation with a small router bit in my Dremel, hand-held; this isn't as bad as it sounds if you maintain a firm two-handed grip on the tool, and clamp the workpiece against rotation. I did more excavation with knives and wood rasps, and sanded the spirals once I had the rough spheres released. I roughly shaped the spheres with the Dremel. As seen in pic4, I went too deep in one spot.

I placed a third dead center through the bottom plank. I modified a spade bit into a two-pronged spur drive, and mounted it in the drill press chuck. Both of these engaged disks of tempered hardboard, dished on one surface to match the desired shape of the balls. While wrestling everything (4 components: the above assembly, one ball, and the two disks) into alignment on the drill press table, one of the spiral limbs cracked in two places. This presented a crisis of conscience: Should I glue the spiral back together and proceed with the original plan? Or should I deftly remove the balls and turn them the easy way? The devil won this battle: I removed the rough balls, taking care to keep them in order to maintain the fiction.

As indicated above, I had no real turning tools, and my only reference for turning a ball was a vague memory of an old article in Popular Mechanics or such. I used a wood rasp for most of the shaping, and finished with sandpaper of various grits. I remounted the ball several times during each stage to shape its entire surface. On the final passes, the dead center reached through its disk and left burn marks on the ball, also shown in pic 4. Finally, I replaced the balls in their original order within the cavity, and glued the cracked spiral. An angel must have been with me too; I can't find the glue lines. I suppose it's just as well that it worked out this way. Even now, if I used the original plan on a real lathe, I'm not sure how I would maneuver a tool rest among the spirals and still have room for a chisel. I suspect I'd use the free-hand rasp again.

To square the entire ends, I set the piece vertically on some short wood strips in the rabbets for a constant height above the router table, and used the staight bit on the end grain. At the time, I only knew of wet finishes. I couldn't envision using them without everything sticking together. So I left it unfinished.

The color in the pictures is off base. My camera has just recently returned from Canon's hospital, and I haven't yet restored the manual color balance. The actual colors have almost no red component.

The species is unknown. Dimensions:
6.25" (160mm) diameter
16.75" (425mm) high
spirals 1.15" (30mm) diameter (sorta round)
balls 2.1" (53mm) diameter.

BTW, pics 1 & 2 are a stereo pair. You can free-view the thumbnails by focusing each eye on them separately, as done with a random-dot stereogram. Applying the same process on the enlarged views takes some image manipulation. Results follow.

Joe

**joe greiner** · 28th September 2007, 06:03 AM

Stereo view for free viewing

There's sure to be a better way of doing this than the ham-handed technique I used. I swear, upgrading my computer is really working its way to the top of my incomplete projects list, including some better image manipulation software.

The objective is to place the two images about 2.5" (64mm) apart on the screen. This is the average distance between adult eyes, and is a practical maximum separation, even for those with experience in free viewing.

I opened both images (pics 1 & 2 of the original post) in reduced mode. I stretched and squeezed the windows to limit the views, and moved them adjacent to one another, so that common points were about 2.5" (64mm) apart on the screen. The window frames were disconcerting, though, so I moved the windows farther apart and took a screen shot for manipulation.

I pasted the screen shot into MSPaint. I erased the window frames, and moved the right image closer to the left, with common points about 2.5" apart as required. The OS wouldn't allow saving the file as jpeg (don't ask), and the bmp file was too large. So I noted the image dimensions in pixels and took another screen shot.

I established the noted parameters in MSImaging, and pasted the second screen shot. I was able to save this file as jpeg. Viewing can still be troublesome, depending on your monitor's dimensions and the screen resolution. If the separation distance on the screen is more than 2.5" (64mm), or if you don't have experience in free viewing of stereo pairs, try increasing the screen resolution so as to reduce the size of the displayed image.

As a last resort, you can print each original image separately, and view them with a mechanical/optical stereo viewer.

Joe

**wheelinround** · 28th September 2007, 08:41 AM

Joe an interesting piece the article, the work then of course the stereo image

Makes the old adage of "You can do More with Less" ring true.

**TTIT** · 28th September 2007, 09:39 AM

Looked like too much of a read - but then I saw the pics and figured it would be worth finding out how you did it. Impressive stuff Joe

Must give something like that a try myself 'one day'!

**Skew ChiDAMN!!** · 28th September 2007, 04:23 PM

I often put the cart before the horse... but at least I let 'em build the bleedin' road first! No lathe, basic tools, your first project and you come up with that? Yowsers.

I've made a few captive balls in my turnings, but never a spiralled cage. I wonder if I can persuade a spiral to snap for me?

**hughie** · 29th September 2007, 12:28 AM

Joe,

Anybody that has a go at turning with out a lathe and gets that sort of result gets my vote.

**joe greiner** · 29th September 2007, 01:49 AM

Thanks, mates. I don't know what possessed me to try it, but it seemed like a good idea at the time. I reckon I'll use it for my Show 'n' Tell at next weeks' meeting. Probably better colour rendition and higher resolution a week or two* later:

http://n-fl-woodturners.org/

(* All-volunteer web site, and precious little of that - The January meeting change was 2006 I think.)

Joe

**dnb** · 11th December 2008, 04:18 AM

Sorry to revive such an old thread, but that is absolutely amazing...

Being a n00b to wood working, this stuff really excites me!

**Ad de Crom** · 11th December 2008, 08:52 AM

Joe, if you did this without using a lathe, as I could read in your long story, it more amaze me that you was able to make this spiral cave.(the magic word, patience?)
I never tried to make such a thing, must took you a long time to get it ready.
Even with using a lathe it's hard to make this.
Anyway I like it a lot, don't know if I would try that by myself.
I suppose this spiral cave has a special place in your home, isn't it.
Ad

**wheelinround** · 11th December 2008, 12:06 PM

Ad thanks for reviving this thread

Joe just went and checked out your personal page of show and tell

a real pro-Joe

Ray

**joe greiner** · 12th December 2008, 02:31 AM

Welcome aboard, dnb. I don't know how you found something buried so deep (almost half-way into history), but congratulations anyway.

And thanks to all of you. Ray, the website has had some recent hiccups. Storage got cramped for a while, but now restored. Even so, the nominal webmaster has been out of pocket, and updates are sometimes sketchy. For example, the January meeting 2009 is on the 6th, not the 3rd (2008).

And so it goes.

Cheers,
Joe

**Ed Reiss** · 12th December 2008, 01:20 PM

Good work Joe

**Hardenfast** · 14th December 2008, 09:28 AM

I'm also glad to see this one revisited, as I haven't seen it before.

Your first turning project, Joe? Outstanding! That would have been when you were just a pup, I guess. You know, when people see my few modest segmented bowls etc they comment that they wouldn't have the patience for it. Let them try your project, particularly given the amount of hand work involved!

It has some extra interest for me because I've just been watching some videos regarding the "Legacy Ornamental Mill", which you and the ornamental turners here (eg. Ray) are probably familiar with. I think the company is somewhere in Utah - maybe not far from you? Actually, wrong! For some reason I thought you were from Texas.

Anyway, I was particularly fascinated to watch them cut some hollow spiral candle sticks on this thing, which is basically a type of lathe mechanism with a router mounted in a manually operated & geared travel head, while the piece gets manipulated by hand in the bed as the router passes over it. Fairly simple idea but quite brilliant results. I doubt it could do your captive balls though, Joe.

As Vern and the others have said - very, very impressive my friend. Seriously impressive.

**joe greiner** · 14th December 2008, 10:35 PM

Thanks again, mates.

IIRC, Roy Underhill (The Woodwright's Shop) had a carved spiral piece on a back bench on one of his shows on PBS about that time. I made a first stab at that one - all freehand. The spiral cage seemed like a good next step.

The Legacy mill has been gone for a while, I think. Craftsman (Sears) had a similar tool, called the Router Crafter, if memory serves me. The router travel was coordinated with the rotation via aircraft cable. Cable stretch (or APPARENT stretch) might be somewhat dodgy. Thus, they work best with a bias in only one direction to alleviate backlash. I considered building one with added bicycle chains, but other pursuits dominated. Either way, they couldn't do the captive balls.

At about 15 years ago, I was working full time (busting my arze actually). I probably have a diary someplace to provide the amount of time it took, which was obviously substantial. I didn't have a digital camera, and wasn't aware of the value of WIP pictures until I joined here anyway. The pics for the original post were taken from parts left around by the pack rat.

Cheers,
Joe

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