Thread: catching up during this season

Originally Posted by hughie

... on a high tensile 200mm dia bar x 300mm

Hughie

Nice enhancement there from our hollowing expert!

I presume that is a 20mm diam bar.

Oops sorry forgot to mention, its actually an old linear bearing shaft so its been flame hardened to the surface,very stiff. Normally as these wear out they are thrown away, managed to save quite a few of them, another good source is old pneumatic cylinder rods. Generally they are high tensile and hard chromed, ideal for wood turning you just grind a little of the hard chroming off where you want to drill. I have a couple of them as tool rests as you can weld the ends quite easily, no need to redress the knicks etc ever.

Looks to be a lot of tool on the "wrong" side of the tool rest. Is there much grab when using the tool?

Originally Posted by Brett Hammond

Looks to be a lot of tool on the "wrong" side of the tool rest. Is there much grab when using the tool?

Nah you set the depth of cut on the Pro-Forme to whatever you require. The brass shield on top controls the cut and taking a leaf out of Rolly Munro's book you set a small cut. This has two benefits minimal catches and minimal vibration as I will be at some time 250mm+ or more form the tool rest and extended around 100mm+ from the centre line of the tool handle

Originally Posted by hughie

Nah you set the depth of cut on the Pro-Forme to whatever you require.

It's also my favourite hollowing 'head'.

I also quite like their scraper tip that can be rotated to desired angle for shear scraping inside hollow forms. The only one that I know of that does that.

Further to that Brett I do have a detachable handle that fits most of the hollowers at right angles to counter the twisting motion of long over hangs, also a support bar that sits on the toolrest to support the over hang. This extreme over hang turning is not something I do a lot of as most of my hollow vessels have larger openings.

Originally Posted by hughie

... I do have a detachable handle that fits most of the hollowers at right angles to counter the twisting motion of long over hangs.

I'm the grateful owner of a few of Hughie's tool bars and when I was looking to add a side handle for the same purpose I found the handle bar extenders my kids had on their old push bikes happened to fit, so I snavelled one of those.

handle bar extenders - sml.jpg

There are even fancier versions of those now, like these.

However, the swan's neck configuration on the cutting end transmits no more twisting than a cutting tip on a full length straight bar (provided the straight part of the bar is on the tool rest) as the tip is then in effect in line with (or close to) that of the handle.

I'm not sure why I'm chipping in on this.... Hughie is the hollowing guru on this forum!

I just do the occasional piece and have to remind myself how to go about it whenever I do another one. But, at least, like Hughie, I've never found the need to use one of those expensive fancy hollowing rigs. If I couldn't deep hollow out a piece without one of those contraptions I would stick to bowl turning...

Birch - 11 x 9.25in.JPG
11.5"h x 9"w