Help wanted - Indexing on the Super Nova chuck

"Chuck" wrote: (clip) you could make a metal plate with the same sized center hole as the spindle, with indexing holes drilled therein, (clip) ^^^^^^^^^^^^^ The difficulty here is laying out and drilling all the holes, making sure they are equally spaced. Another possibility would be to mount a circular saw blade on the spindle, and use the notches between the teeth. Problem there is enlarging the center hole to fit your spindle, and making sure it is perfectly centered.

Maybe you could clamp a saw blade to a piece of metal or plastic, and use it as a drill guide.

BTW, I just bought a Veritas Optical Center Punch from Lee Valley. It would be invaluable for such a project--you get to position the center punch using a built-in 8x magnifier with cross hairs.

Assuming you thread your chuck on to the spindle, you could make a metal plate with the same sized center hole as the spindle, with indexing holes drilled therein, slip plate onto spindle, thread on chuck, Viola.

Hello Tony,

I've made several indexing plates using 1/4" Birch Plywood as the base. I drilled a hole in the center to fit the lathe spindle, slipped the plywood onto the spindle, screwed on a chuck or faceplate to hold the plywood solid. Turn the plywood round, move in a bit from the rim and cut a shallow groove with a skew chisel. Measure the diameter of the groove you've cut and multiply that by pi (3.14159). Divide that sum by the number index holes you need. Set a pair of dividers to that dimension and step off your number of holes around the groove. If your setting is exact, the last step should end up in the first hole position. Now, use a Forstner bit (I use 1/4" drill) and drill holes about half way through the plywood. You now have an indexing plate.

Note: If you work out the setting for the dividers and work backward to get the diameter of the groove, you will simplify the setting of the dividers.

Take a flat board and drill a hole in its center. Saw a slot in one end with a hack saw. Clamp this board to your lathe bed and take an old hacksaw blade and slide it up and down until the hole in the end will line up with one of the holes in your index plate. Glue the blade into the board and break off the portion below the board. Now, turn a short length of 1/4" dowel down to fit throught the hole in the hacksaw blade. Glue it to the hacksaw blade with epoxy or super glue. You now have the indexing pin to position your indexing plate. Simply pull the hacksaw blade back, rotate to the next position and allow the dowel to enter the hole. I actually used brass rather than wood for the indexing pin and rivited it to the hacksaw blade, but wood should work fine.

Caution: Don't turn on the lathe while the indexing pin is engaged with the indexing wheel.

These work great for occasional use.

Fred Holder

I use the disk behind the chuck method with either drilled holes, notches in the rim, or visually aligning lines on the disk with a guide block clamped to the lathe bed. To arrive at precise spacing of holes/notches/lines, I either make something on the computer and glue the printout to the disk, or I use the tape method. The tape method is down and dirty but works amazingly well. I wrap a piece of masking tape around the edge of the disk and cut it precisely so there is no overlap. Then I peel the tape off the disk and lay it straight on the lathe bed. I measure the total length (in millimeters for easy math), divide by the number of divisions I want, make pencil marks on the tape, and wrap it back around the disk. To transfer the divisions to the disk I line up the tool rest to the center line and mark with a pencil. For one-time use I skip making a disk and put the tape directly on the bowl or hollow form I am working on. Works great.

-mike paulson, fort collins, co

That's TOO easy! Thanks.