Thread: help plz

G'day Alan, welcome to the nut house, we have a couple of young turners on here.

Croydon where? There are more than one in Australia.
There may be a turners club or a forum member near you.

What brand/model is the lathe?

What sort of noise is it making?

The best wood is free wood.

Avoid crappy pine for learning as it is difficult to get a good finish & can be a bit disheartening.

Welcome to the board.
There are a few young blokes on the board who have become well regarded, don't let age bother you.
Just remember this place is like a room full of your old man's mates so just be a little carefull what you say at first.

One of the best investments you can make is one of the recognised texts.
Mike darlow is popular.

Some of the noises cam be indicators of poor method or problems.
Good cuts should sound sweet.

Mounting between centers is where you should be starting.
If you are starting with basicly square stock, I prefer to cut a diagonal X with a hand saw then strike the centre with a nail punch. Both ends.
Our australian hardwoods are tooo hard to expect the drive centre to grip without some help.
If you try to get the centres to bite with tailstock preasure only you will probably overstress the bearongs in the headstock and the tail centre... noises will result.

cheers

Im with Cliff there, where are you, if you are in Croydon Melbourne there are a number of turners close to you, I being one of them, though I have only just started myself.

for wood, gotta agree with cliff, free wood is good wood, but if you are looking for some really good, but expensive wood, you can try "the woodsmith" in Lusher Rd (In the Rock Centre), or even try the mill in Millgrove (Up near Yarra Junction).

and show us your dish, we need pictures

as for centreing, you can get jigs and such, check the Carba-tec or Timbercon catelogs. All I do is pick the four corners, draw a line across the wodd, where it intersects is your middle, as for round stock, I just give it a guess and pray. Gotta find me a better method there me thinks..

well this has been to much to read so I will leave it at welcome aboard, and watch these guys, there nuts..., thought they know what they are talking about

Welcome aboard, 4wdin.

Free wood is best. Try different kinds as available. Do some non-project turning for practice to learn responses of different tools and different woods. Don't begrudge your mistakes. We all learned from ours. (And still learning )

Cross cuts help to align the wings on the spur center/centre. Coax it into the wood with a sound smite from a soft-faced hammer to avoid damaging the end of the taper.

Joe

yer i live in croydon, melbourne
i bought the lathe second hand and got like 15 chisels and the two chucks its a sherline wtl1024
and also i have red gum sleepers and was wondering if it would spin nicly and will post pics this weekend as the pics are at my dads

and it makes funny noises when i try to round a square peice of wood

I am normally in the area when in town and I could drop by and have a look if you like.

Yeap, I think it would be a good idea to have somebody come over for a look at it.

Croydon? How odd. We seem to be be breeding turners. If you'd care to PM me your address I could probably stroll over one day. I also suspect that you'd be interested in our local club: Maroondah Woodturners.

Originally Posted by 4wdin

also how do i center my wood i have two chucks an ajustable one and this one that digs into the wood.

It sounds like the second "chuck" you're talking about is a spur-drive. Generally speaking, you measure/eyeball the centres of each end of wood when it's off the lathe, use a centre-punch to mark it and mount it between centres with the spur drive. This let's you rough the timber into a cylinder and turn a small spigot so that it can be mounted in the scroll chuck.

But you'll learn a lot more with someone there to show you the basics than you will by reading words, words and more words...

And there's lots of resources on the web.

See eg. the e-book intro to woodturning at http://www.turningtools.co.uk/

Originally Posted by Skew ChiDAMN!!

I also suspect that you'd be interested in our local club: Maroondah Woodturners...

Skew, I should probably get the details myself. Check it out. Can you PM me the details, or do they have a web address

Neil

hey dude.

welcome to the forum.

if i were you, i would definately accept skew chidamn's and dj's offer. they'll set ya right.

good luck....

yer sweet as
ill c when i have a free day im working 6 days a week so im booked out heaps and yer is the sherline anygood it seams it and would it be worth getting a good quality roughing tool?

Originally Posted by Skew ChiDAMN!!

PM me your address I could probably stroll over one day.

Mum, Meet skew, I met him on the internet...... Imagine the look on mums face.. HMMMMM, Remember I know what you look like