Small turning

Charge more. Bulk discounts don't apply when bulk does not equal less cost per unit to make.

You could try a router duplicator rather than a dead-chisel duplicator, unless that's revealing some deep dark secret that the cabal doesn't wan ^%^!%#@^&!%$!$^%...

Well, at 5 spindles per piece, and 1000 pieces, you would be really fast by the time you got done. You could start with a long dowel, and stick it all the way through the headstock, and through your chuck, and do them in series, parting off as each is done. Using a router jig could work, depending on how much detail there is in each one. robo hippy

Don't think the router would work, one othe places I contacted said no to the idea.

Don't own a chuck so didn't even consider it for this. It could shorten the turning time by quite a bit and may make it doable. I will have to look into that and maybe buy one. I know if I go ahead with this I will be getting some smaller chisels for detail work!

If you're thinking "chuck" a collet chuck might be a better choice, assuming you can feed it through the back. Or pre-machine the tenons on the dowels, and collet chuck those.

Also, see:

In message , sweet sawdust writes

Not sure if this idea will work, but its one I have considered in the past , just not got around to trying

Take a number of pieces of HSS of suitable width, and profile them to the shape you require,

Then turn in stages, using the home made tool as a scraper. You could even set a depth stop to speed the process

Failing that get some latex and make a mould from a turned master, then fill the mould with all your sawdust suitably bonded :)

I'm presuming the customer also want the Impossible Three

- cheap, quick and good. You can have any two, but never all three. At $30 each, in batches of 1,000, you might find a CNC shop that could figure out how to do it. And in Ones and Twos, $20 a piece might be ok - if you like doing small spindle turning - for a while. But I'm willing to bet the customer has a price point at or under $5 each. If you have a high tolerance for boredom, and don't mind working for 50 cents an hour, turning a few might be interesting - just for fun.

Have the customer provide a 3D cad file of the parts and maybe get bids from machine shops.

Personally, I'd pass on this one. Not that interesting nor challenging.

charlie b

My suggestion would be, "If you enjoy wood turning, and want to continue to do so, turn the job down."

"> My suggestion would be, "If you enjoy wood turning, and want to continue

Right now I got it down to $8 each, price to go up quickly I fear. But I agreed to give him a prototype of my work and a quote for the product, so we shall see what we see. This job is no more boring then some of the others I get into and money is money.

Yes the customer wants all three and wants them hand made so he may be willing to pay. I talked to some wood turning shops and they said NO!! so it will have to be hand turned. I don't expect to get it I believe my price will be too high for him. It would be cheaper to do China Plastic. The next one he wants is asymmetrical and will require a split turning and a jointed turning, wait tell he sees what that will cost

if these little spindles are all identical, then just profile a grinding wheel to the desired profile, then running the lathe at 3000 RPM, bring the grinder to the spindle - should take about 20 seconds each, cost for the wheel would be the usual $15 for a wheel plus a diamond tool you use to cut the profile - you can probably cut all of the 5,000 spindles with one shaping of the wheel if you keep the speeds up and don't let the wheel load up