hard or soft waste wood on faceplate?

It definitely won't hold as well as hardwood; the screw threads are where most trouble occurs IMO. However, where you are using the glue/paper trick on wet wood the weak link may not be the soft wood if you use good size screws and as many as you can. Billh

Softwood and ring-porous hardwoods will split along annual rings more easily than diffuse-porous hardwoods. True poplars, soft maple are great choices.

I've even used three/quarter inch plywood, plus good screws and lots of them are suggested. To add suspenders to that "belt" you might consider gluing it also!

I _have_ had tulip poplar waste wood break, but this is the softest wood I've ever used as waste wood. Right now I've got a hunk of purpleheart on there as waste wood. That one seems to work pretty well. : )

I'm FAR from an expert, and I'm sure others here will tell me why it's wrong.. *g*

I use soft pine, an inch larger than the faceplate diameter, so I can cut it along with whatever is glued to the other side of the paper.. (I'm cheap, so when they say "paper or plastic, I ask for paper once in a while)

I bolt the pine to the faceplate using countersunk 1/4 bolts with lock washers and nuts behind the faceplate.. I cut the rounds oversize with a jig saw, drill & bolt 'em, then turn them round and glue the paper over it..

mac

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Mac there is no wrong way or right way if it works for you

But I use good wood screws, in my face plate, if my screws don't strip out then I'm not afraid that the wood will come off, now the glue joint is another question, and I rarely use glued on bowl blanks, I normally cut the outside form then use the stronghold chuck to hold it and hollow the inside.

Have fun and take care Leo Van Der Loo

mac davis wrote:

ok Leo.. here's an area I'm having trouble with...

I'm trying to get away from faceplate turning, to avoid the wasted wood.. (hoping to get into some more exotic wood than firewood)

I've been experimenting with roughing out the bowls between centers and leaving them with either a base or tenon for the chuck, so I can do the rest of the turning with the Talon..

My problem is that whether I use a tenon or a base, the bowl won't true on the chuck.... a neighbor that works in a machine shop thinks that the base or tenon might not be true with the face of the bowl and that if it isn't, the bowl won't true out no matter how much you carve away at it...

Logic tells me that if something is true when between centers, it should be true when chucked, but I must be missing something here... H E L P ! !

mac

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Mac, Does the chuck run true when it is mounted on the spindle?

When you first chuck the bowl it should be fairly true but perhaps not perfect. This is not a big deal since all you have to do is a light cut on the outer surface of the bowl to get it true with the chucking. Don't worry if the top of the bowl is not necessarily perpendicular to the bed of the lathe since that will be quickly trued up as you continue shaping and hollowing the bowl. When you chuck the bowl in your talon make sure the front face of the jaws butts against the bottom of the bowl where it meets the tenon. The bottom of the tenon does not rest against the bottom of the jaws where they fasten to the chuck body. I always make sure I have a small flat surface about 1/4" wide where the tenon and the bottom of the bowl meets to provide good registration with the jaws.

billh

Right now I've got a hunk of

:) rich

I like to use hard wood for a glue bock and then hot glue to hold on the blank.

When I rough turn I make a tenon at the base of the green wood blanks The problem is once the blanks is dry the tenon becomes oval. I have not yet found an ideal way to true the tenon before placing it in the chuck for finishing.

I don't know if you have tried this or consider it not ideal. One of the methods which is fairly simple is to make a crude friction drive for the roughed bowl. This can be a a cylinder mounted on a faceplate or chuck with the corners knocked off it that sort of sits against the bottom of the bowl. It doesn't have to contact the bowl curvature anywhere near perfectly. Put a piece of router mat or an old mouse pad or almost any thing else between the bowl bottom and the drive piece. (I have seen this done by just putting the bowl over a naked chuck.) You don't need much driving force because you are only going to take light cuts off the tenon. Center the bowl up best you can and bring up the tailstock to the center of the tenon and push bowl against friction drive. Adjust until you are happy with how true it is running and trim the tenon. You can do it very quickly. I have a Oneway Stronghold and unless the tenon is very oval I often just chuck the oval tenon. Billh

Dennis,

Get a copy of Bill Grumbine's video on turning bowls. He addresses and demonstrates a very simple solution to that problem. Bill's address is:

I sure like the pin chuck/jaws method. Puts it right back between centers once it's dry. Though if you make centers before you set it aside to dry, they'll be pretty close to where they were when time comes to reset, even if you're using a cone or such. Don't think you have to do the entire turn from a single mount, and all kinds of methods will suggest themselves.

Take a look at spindle turning a bowl

Hi Mac

Yes I know what you are talking about, the way I deal with it is like this, I make sure that the face around the tenon or inside the recess, is flat and clean and square, (I use a sharp scraper for that, NO sanding) then place the work piece on the chuck and pushing in the center ( in line with the spindle ) while tightening the chuck, I do NOT squeeze the living daylight out of the wood, ( wood will distort differed depending the grain of the wood )(face grain end grain knot etc. ) now I will give the wood a quick spin, with my tool rest close so I am able to see how much if any, the work piece is running out, if its out more than I like, I will find the place where the side of the piece is farthest away from my tool rest, that is the side where it is not seated properly against the chuck jaws, I will use whatever is handy but use mostly a mallet to get it to seat better if loosening and retightening at a different place does not help, now I will check if the piece is seated better (I usually have to mark the wood so I know if things do improve or if I need to use more persuasion and also look if the wood has changed shape because of drying, 2 equal high and low spots is than the best I can do, and yes I do keep in mind that there is always some flexing going on in the whole setup, like give in the wood, chuck and shaft and bearings, machining tolerances can ad up, but normally speaking I can get the wood to run very close to perfect, like maybe 10 to 20 thou. out, certainly less than 1/16" One more thing I make sure that the tenon is not so long that it bottoms out, or the recess is to deep. Hope this is some help, if you like some clarification ( It's clear to me ) just ask, I will try to ad to or improve my answer.

Have fun and take your time and care Leo Van Der Loo

mac davis wrote:

Nah, snakewood, the ebony smokes too much.

(I'm

I recycle the newsprint sales flyers from the junk mail.

Bill

I would guess that it is true that hardwoods would, in general be stronger than softwoods. That, however, is the wrong question. The correct question is whether it will hold well enough to allow you to complete the operations you intend to complete. On my 12x33 lathe, the answer is 'yes'. The motor bogs down before I can get a deep enough cut to pull the workpiece off the glue sandwich. And that's a drag because sometimes I'd like to make more aggressive cuts.

You may be approaching a 20" diameter piece of manhole cover on a 5 h.p. lathe with a 2" roughing gouge in your hand. In that case, erring on the side of safety, I'd recommend that you invest the other 50 cents in a hardwood faceplate.

But if you are turning less adventuresome pieces, you should be just fine with softwoods.

Bill