True but you will only have one, buying a tap on the other hand can be used to make many Faceplates of different sizes allowing you to mount blanks rough turn and set aside without removing the faceplate for later remounting, without having to try to re-aline as you still have the exact same mount to lathe piont. :)
"No Way" wrote: True but you will only have one, buying a tap on the other hand can be used to make many Faceplates (clip) ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ You can buy a LOT of nuts for the price of one spindle-sized tap. I have done this, and I keep several waste blocks with embedded nuts. They can be saved and sometimes reused, or reworked for othr jobs. After too many reworkings leave me with too little wood, I just glue on another block and I'm on my way again. I'm not saying a tap isn't useful, but my lathe has a
1 1/4" x 8 pitch spindle. I hate to think what that tap would cost.I found this at Woodcraft while looking for a hand wheel.
"Jesse" wrote: in message news: snipped-for-privacy@corp.supernews.com...
That's altogether different. Never mind! ;-)
jesse - if you want 1X8, nuts are about 50 cents each from any hardware store. 1X8 taps are about $10 used anywhere - try ebay, for example, or I'll sell you one for $10 just to prove my point - there may be something special about that tap in the woodcraft catalog - perhaps the really skinny shaft that means it cannot be used with metal. Personally, I'd buy a box of nuts and I'd buy a used tap when I stumbled on one at a garage sale or something.
note that 1.25X8 taps (and nuts) are a LOT more expensive
I used to make my vacuum chucks with nuts.. very inexpensive, as you don't need the super hard steel or whatever.. I think that Leo's point is that you can make several of any size you want for a few dollars worth of nuts..
At the time, I set up a jig to drill the recess for the nut and made 4 or 5 different size vac chucks.. Same principal as the spindle tap, which I use now, but a bit easier to make, IMHO... Just glue the nut in, screw it and the attached wood onto the spindle and turn to desired size/shape.. I've messed up thread cutting a lot more often than I've messed up epoxying a nut into a hole..
mac
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It's nice to have a metal faceplate, but I think you might get away with a wooden one if you need to. I made a run of these a while back, and used anodized aluminum faceplates from Rockler, which seemed to work pretty well.
Perhaps the biggest reason for a metal faceplate V. a wooden one, aside from durability, is that you can use a much smaller diameter. Your chuck will be limited in range depending on what faceplate you use because the bolts can only slide as far as the rim of the faceplate.
Probably a lot- but if you're just making one or two wooden faceplates, and not a whole lot of them, it is perfectly possible, though slightly more difficult and time consuming, to thread wood with a regular screw (in this case, the spindle itself) I made a shifter knob for my car when I bought it, just for the hell of it, and I just treaded it by drilling a pilot hole, then screwing it on a couple of threads, backing it out to clear the dust, then screwing it on a little further, and repeating until it was fully "tapped." Don't recall who told me to do that offhand, but it was someone on this list, and it was just the ticket.
Worked pretty good in that application, and I've taken it off to show people a couple dozen times over the past few years with no apparent degrading of the threads.
Man, I'm going to have to start visiting garage sales in your neighborhood. All the ones around here seem to have are used clothes and 1960's era dishes. I did find an old hacksaw once, but that was the exception to the rule. :)
If your are going with the Aluminum machined face plates you should try
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