Thread: A Couple of Questions

Paul,

You can always hang it off the VL-175 at the club which goes down to 62 rpm!

Hei Joe,
I've actually got it fairly well balanced now, although the 175 at Liddlelow was an option. The problem I have is that my lathe has the 30mm shaft but the 175 is only 25mm.
The problem with swapping face plates is that you can never (I can't anyway) get the balance exactly right after I change face plates - can I get an adapter to go from 30mm to 25mm so I can use my face plate on the smaller shaft.

Is this block of wood going to be too big for my VM100 chuck?

Cheers
Paul

Hmm, k, can see the vibration dampening thinking in no. 1; my take on that was to put a shelf on the lower cross braces and 80kg of concrete bags on that - so, pushing down rather than damping, but maybe with the same effect.

End grain ... hehehe .. well, no seriously; suggest small cuts with min. tool overhang. Otherwise, it's 60 grit all the way.

I'm a fan of curved rests and small gouges.

To avoid flexing and the resulting tear out: stagger your cuts as you go down; support the outside with a couple of fingers from your free hand (try gouging with one hand, not as hard as it may appear); or build a bowl steady like the one I've posted. Or leave the wall thick. Bugger even thickness - do an ogee, swim against the trend!

"Is this block of wood going to be too big for my VM100 chuck?"

Not for outside shaping with tailstock.

What jaws are you going to use?

How heavy is this lump?

For hollowing, you may have to use the tailstock, leave a stem, and then cut that off and sand back at the end of the job.

Edit: other option is to leave a thick foot, and fix this to your faceplate. When finished hollowing, remove and manually chisel and rotarily sand it away. (Further edit: Or better: use a glue block.) Or build a vacuum chuck. Good tool; do a google; lots of designs on the web. An old vac cleaner is enough.

Hei Ern,
The only jaws I have for my chuck for this sort of work are the stock ones that came with it.

In regard to holding the lathe down, I never thought about the vibration aspect and used the blue metal for the weight but I suppose when you think about it that something loose would absorb from of the vibration.
Cheers
Paul

Hopeful, with the standard jaws Paul. They just don't exert enough hold on a piece of your size; even if you don't pull it out with a catch you'll get flex - and that means end-grain tears.

Paul, that is one large lump of Jarrah. Can't wait to see results of your hard work.
Good luck
Macca

Paul,

I cannot reply to your pm as you have no space left. Delete some of the old pm's you have in the folder so that I can send my reply.

The blank is big but not impossible to turn with the VM100 on a spigott and the MC900, but go gently don't dig in, rub the bevel, otherwise no matter how you hold it, it will bounce on the concrete. Maybe turn it on the faceplate and tailstock. Once round and fairly shaped, remove faceplate after marking the center, then turn it between centers and put a 10 mm long spigot x 45 mm on it, slightly bevelled like the inside of the jaws. Try getting it so that at max clamping pressure, the jaws are as close to a perfect circle as possible..... that means about 1.5 mm gap between the jaws. If the spigott is too big, the jaws only clamp on the edges which is why people have failures with standard jaws and then resort to shark jaws. With each action we take it pays to take technique into account.
I am amazed that the VL175 does not have a 30mm x 3.5 spindle, but then some old fossile at the club spent a lot of money to have adaptors made to turn the Woodfasts they have there to 1" x 8 ( or 10 ), although they have more m30 spindles than other and more than what they have chucks. Some people cling to the imperial system although almost the whole world uses metric...........same applies at the club. Spent hours showing them how much money they were going to waste with those adaptors, rather than changing inserts on the chucks. However that is history.

Go gently with that chunk, all blanks have the potential to go flying.........the big ones just make a bigger dent on landing.

Hei Joe,
I just cleaned out my PM's so you can try again.
I'm not sure what the reasoning is at Liddlelow for going to 25mm, I normally grab one of the 30mm lathes and toss the adapter in the draw so I can use my chucks - plus if I have something that needs a face plate I usually mount it at home.

I'll let you know how I go with the block of jarrah.
Cheers
Paul

G'day Paul,

I've done what you are trying to do on an MC900.

I've chased it around the floor with seriously out of balance pieces

I've had really out of balance pieces cause the lathe to come to a point where it wound up against the wall behind it - and not me luckily :eek:

I've also had them fly off the lathe - without terminating injuries - luckily

Most of your advice has come from people with much heavier lathes, my approach is to try and remove a little material with whatever you have available. You know it is out of balance so overcome it. Bandsaws are great but you can achieve results with the table saw, planer - use your imagination.

There comes a point where the piece you want to work is THE out of balance piece. Gentle approach, light cuts, sharp tools, BE BLOODY CAREFUL and you can get to a point where you have more control.

Lathe speeds?? You already know the answer to that - thats what on/off switches are for!

I'm not advocating a gung ho approach but sometimes the best results come from using all your talents to achieve something you are proud of. Bit like driving a car - you need to know what your limits are - we can't all handle 10 tenths.

FWIW

Jamie

Hei Jamie,
What people need to remember is that what we are doing is inherantly dangerous in itself. If you try to be gung ho in this game you will get yourself hurt or worse - especially when dealing with large lumps of jarrah.

I think the worst I've had was when I started turning a block without using the tail stock and managed to bend the screw on my Vicmarc chuck when the wood let fly. Fortunately the wonderful people at Vicmarc sent me a replacement screw without charge - if that sounds like a blatant plug it is lol.

For this lump I ended up using a power plane to carve it fairly round - I want to get a carving tool for the angle grinder but I want a good one so I need to wait for some cash.

As for lathe speed, the MC900 has it's limitations in that it only goes down to 500rpm but you do what you can with the gear you have.
Cheers
Paul

Smidsy - All I can say is, "Don't come crying to us when you break the lathe or yourself."

The MC900 lathe obviously isn't equiped to handle such work. You might get away with it this time but you won't continue to. Those lathes were never designed to be used for anything much more than basic spindle turning and a bit of light bowl work. You are really pushing the envelope.

Personally, (on a lathe like that) I reckon it is an accident waiting to happen. I hope it doesn't for your sake.

Cheers - Neil

"I am amazed that the VL175 does not have a 30mm x 3.5 spindle" ... may have missed something in the PMs, but it does come with this standard in Oz.

Originally Posted by ubeaut

Personally, (on a lathe like that) I reckon it is an accident waiting to happen. I hope it doesn't for your sake.

Cheers - Neil

Neil and others,

I agree with your sentiments. I've had 3 stitches in the brow and the biggest internal bleed in the arm I've ever seen from stuff coming out of an MC900.

And it wasn't the machines fault once. I just pushed it too far. Naive, dumb or just plain stupid - probably all 3 in varying situations.

Bit like driving when I first started out - need to find out how far you can push it to be able to work out what the machine will or won't do. All the above apply again :eek:

As a result of that experience I'm sure we've all extracted something from a machine that was more than anyone could have reasonably expected - don't you just love that feeling - You did it!!

Now as I said previously I'm not advocating a "gung ho approach", merely that extra ordinary things can be done with the ordinary, it just takes super ordinary effort, patience and determination. I prefer that advice, as does gatiep to that which suggests you really need a top of the range machine with whatever sized spindle. The fact remains.

I've seen lots of examples of it here and have wondered how they could do that with a lot less eqipment I may or may not have. I was merely trying encourage Paul in his endeavours rather than fault the equipment he was using. Skills, within reason, will overcome the deficiencies elsewhere.

That bloody soapbox again

Paul - hang in there pal - you'll get there.

Jamie