Wednesday's Wisdom For Woodturners Sept 30 2015

It rained here yesterday so I spent most of the day in the basement shop, working at the lathe. I started the coffee scoops mentioned here a couple of weeks ago. There will be 8 scoops (hopefully) so I'm doing each operation on all of them and then on to the next operation.

To fancy the scoops up a little, I glued up blanks of maple and walnut-

Then marked the end centers-

Next turned a tenon on one end to facilitate using the lathe chuck-

I spent some time trying to figure out just what size hole would be needed to hold 2 tablespoons of coffee grounds. A little experimentation determined the hole could be 1 3/8" diameter, 3/4" deep with a rounded bottom at an additional 1/2" deep. The 1 3/8" diameter was because I had a Forstner bit that size.

All Drilled-

Now it was just a matter of shaping the inside. I tried a couple of different tools but finally settled on the Easy Wood Finisher. It cut cleanly and had a small enough cutter diameter to easily shape the inside-

I needed to shape the inside first to be sure I had the correct "volume"- then I could move on to shaping the outside. Even though the blanks didn't extend too far from the chuck, I thought it would be better to support the "free" end. In addition, I always have difficulty re-centering a turning in the chuck when doing the operations in steps. I made an index mark on the chuck and then put a witness mark on the turning, but it still doesn't spin true.

What I needed was a support and a centering device. LIGHT BULB! A cone shaped addition to the tail stock. I turned a cylinder, bored a slightly undersized hole (the closest bit I had), Enlarged the hole to fit over the point of the tail stock live center. Then shaped a tapered cone.

Cleaned it up a little and put it to work-

It worked great. Supports well and helps align the scoop blank for exterior shaping and sanding.

I'm at the point where I need to drill a small hole to accept the scoop handle. I need to figure out how to drill it "plumb" into the side of the scoop. I'm not very good at eye-balling. A crooked handle won't look very nice.

Now, if you want to see a REAL turner in action- Tim Yoder has a video up on turning a Gear Pen kit. Most of us have turned at least one pen, but these laser cut kits offer some special challenges.

Safe Turning!