After the cherry and maple glue joints for the fourth cut
have cured as before the maple is cut down so it is flush with the cherry. Looking at the four faces of the blank the
good news is the left edge of the maple is aligned like it’s supposed to. The bad news is the right side is nowhere
close to what was planned.
Since I have finished the four-stage glue up for the
blank I might as well go ahead and turn it round to see what it looks
like. This starts by cutting off a 3 ½” long piece, finding the center with the center finder and making a small dimple (red
arrow) at the center. This will be used
to locate the live center on the lathe.
After turning the blank round to ¾” diameter the finished
faces look just as weird as the square blank did. The photos below show the blank rotated a
quarter of a turn in each photo. The top
photo looks the best as that’s the one from the result of the 2nd cut. From there each one gets more and more
distorted.
In looking at the ¾” turned blank I wondered what it
would look like if it got turned thinner and here are the results. There are two columns of photos below. The left column shows the same face as it is
turned down in 1/8” increments from 5/8” diameter down to ¼” diameter. Each row is the same size with the right
photo showing the face on the opposite side as the left photo.
Next is to make another test piece using the piece of
inlay maple that exactly matches the width of the saw kerf explained at the end
of the last post. The process of
cutting and gluing is the same as before so no need to go through that
again. Here is after the fourth and last
cut where three maple pieces have been glued in place. It looks pretty good with the maple pieces
lining up like I had expected.
When the fourth and last maple piece glued in this is
what the four sides of this test piece looks like. All of the vertical joints line up and all of
the diagonal pieces cross in the center of each face which is what it’s
supposed to look like as compared with the first test piece shown at the top of
this posting. My original plan was to
use this test piece on a slimline pen but the diameter of that style of pen is
pretty small at about .3”. In looking
back at the first test piece when it was turned down to about that diameter the
majority of the cherry shapes within the knot were lost. Given that this test piece has thicker maple
pieces I think that all of the cherry would be missing from the knot’s interior
as would much of its detail.
This meant that I needed to come up with another use for
the blank. Looking for something to use
the test piece on my wife mentioned she had a small screwdriver that’s
frequently used in the kitchen not as a screwdriver but for odd jobs of prying
things open and the like. It looks
similar to this.
Now that I knew what the test piece is going to be used
for the blank gets cut down to the handle length plus some for chucking in the
lathe. Sequence for turning is to locate
the blank’s center, mount opposite end in the scroll chuck then bring the live
center to the marked center of the blank and tighten everything down. Once that’s done the blank is turned down to
½” in diameter with a slight taper added to the blade end.
Next, a hole is drilled in the end where the screwdriver
blade’s shaft will get epoxied into place.
The last bit of turning is to round the head of the
handle. This is done with a light touch
so as to not break off the handle. When
done a saw is used to cut the handle free.
I don’t want to try and turn the handle completely off as it’s likely
that when it breaks free there will be a little divot in the handle that would
have to be addressed.
After the handle is cut off the screwdriver blade is
inserted in it and the assembly is put in the drill chuck where the end of the
handle gets sanded smooth. From here all
that has to be done is to spray a lacquer finish on the handle followed by
epoxying the screwdriver blade in place but that’s going to be put in hold for
a bit while I work on gluing the maple-katalox-maple inlay glued up.
Gluing the three pieces together to see what I actually
end up is a little bit of a challenge because as soon as the glue is applied to the thin pieces, they start absorbing moisture from the glue and start to
curl. It’s a little like herding cats to
get them all aligned, flattened and clamped in place. The top photo is of how they are clamped
together and the bottom photo is a close view of the left end. Now it’s a matter of letting them set clamped
to cure. That’s going to take a few days
as the cauls used in clamping have an impervious surface which will slow down
the curing.
Next Up – Final Inlay Assembly & Pen Build
No comments:
Post a Comment