The upper part of each gate has three latillas installed
in the opening. The left drawing shows
them highlighted. The right drawing is
an exploded X-Ray view that shows the pins that will hold the latillas in
place. In the original gate these were
wooden dowls and they rotted off enough so that one completely fell out. To prevent this from happening with these gates a ¼” aluminum dowel (red arrow)
will be used. 
I started by laying out the pin hole locations (top
photo) and marked them all at once to make sure they all lined up. That’s followed up by going to the drill
press and setting its fence so the pins would all be centered (bottom photos)
and drilling them.
To cut the pins I made a quick clamping bracket and
mounted it in the bench vice (top photo).
After pushing the rod through the hole and measuring it a clamp holds it
tight in place. Next a jigsaw with a
metal cutting blade is used to cut the dowel free. Once cut the ends are somewhat ragged so
they get mounted in the lathe (bottom photo) where a file is used to cleanup
the end and add a small bevel to ease the entry into the drilled hole.
The latillas are next.
The blanks have been set aside and when checked there were no problems,
everything is still straight, flat and true.
The blanks are made from four layers and because the layers are
different thickness the glued-up blanks vary in total thickness but the width is the same albeit oversize and wider than they are thick. Passing each of them through the table saw got
them down to the same required width and square. 
Because I want the center glue joint centered on the
blank getting them to the same thickness would be time consuming since all the
amounts cut off would be different because of the layers different thicknesses
so a roundabout method is used. It
starts by locating the center along the width which in the photo is
left-to-right dimension. Rather than try and
measure the exact center I get close, mark from both sides then split the
difference. The jeweler’s magnifying
headset helps me hit the side-to-side center.
A closer view is shown in the inset.
Top to bottom dimension across the layers is what varies. I get around that by using the glue line as
my center line then drawing a circle a bit larger than the size of the
latilla’s blank with a compass. 
To make the initial turning a bit easier the four corners
of all the latilla blanks get cut off so I end up with an
octagon. The corners are cut off using
the bandsaw set at 45 degrees. To set
the amount to cut off the blank is placed on the bandsaw table and the fence is
adjusted so the blade is close to the circle on the blank’s end. The left photo shows what I mean and the
right photo shows the last corner cut off.
Since I don’t need to hit the line exactly if its close that’s good
enough for this operation which means the fence does not have to be moved very
often. The bottom photo is of all six
latilla blanks ready to be turned.
The top photo shows the octagonal blank set between
centers ready to be turned round and the bottom photo shows the finished
cylinder turned to a constant required diameter of 1 ½”.
Thinking through the process needed to make the latillas
from the cylinder I saw a problem with the machining process. When I did the test piece there was no need
to drill the holes for the aluminum mounting pins.
However, the actual pieces will need to have those holes drilled while
the blank is still a cylinder so they are centered in the blank. That has to be done before the freehand
shaping since I can’t hold an irregular shape in the lathe to drill the hole
and with the holes I can’t mount it between centers to do the freehand
shaping. The end result is a detour to
make a specialty jig to hold the blank after the holes are drilled while the
freehand shaping is done. The jig starts
out with a wood block that gets bandsawn into a rough cylinder.
Next a cylindrical blank gets turned smooth and to
size between centers.
It’s then removed from the lathe and the spur drive
swapped out to a 4-jaw chuck so the blank can be clamped in place. In the top photo a small inset is drilled for
clearance when the jig is installed on a live center. In the bottom photo a hole has been drilled
that gets threaded so the jig can be screwed onto the live center. 
Here’s the tap used to cut the threads and the finished
threaded hole.
The center finder is put into the drill chuck and the
center of the jig gets marked for drilling the ¼” hole the aluminum dowel will
go in.
This is the completed jig screwed on to the live center (red arrow) with the aluminum dowel inserted ready to be used.
To drill the holes in the latillas the drive center is
removed and the 4-jaw chuck is installed.
The cylindrical latilla blank is clamped in the 4-jaw chuck with a
second live center in the tail stock to make sure the cylinder is
aligned correctly. This is all done in the top
photo. Next the live center in the tail
stock gets removed and the ¼” drill bit in a drill chuck gets mounted in the
tail stock (bottom photo) so the hole can get drilled.
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