Home-made chatter tool?

I saw a 'homemade' one in a recent demonstration that I attended. I've been able to build simular with good results.

All it is is a wooden dowl that had a cut(bandsaw) down the horizontal center of one end, an old sawsall blade jammed in the cut, and a hoseclamp over it all to keep it in place.

You should shape the (cutting) end of the "blade" to how wide you want the pattern. I chose a slim 1/8", by using my trust grinding wheel and tapering the sides of the end. The teeth that are on the blade have no more use with this application, and I found grinding them off to a dull point a safe thing to do.

Another thing to factor in is the length of the blade comming out of the end of the dowl. The longer it is, the more 'flex' length it has. Experiement with this, but I found 1" a good length.

Some woods take chatter marks better than others. I would suspect green wood to work better.

BE CAREFUL if you use a hoseclamp, as the knoby end could come in contact with the wood and cause all kinds of mishaps. I've found by sad experience to hold the tool tightly with both hands, especially since this is much lighter than my other tools.

Ken Grunke has designed a chatter tool that rivals those commercially available. He has documented this tool at:

I've been fiddling around with making one of these for several weeks. It appears to be a good design and one that will satisfy most users. Take a look.

Harry

P.S. I've never met Ken. I just appreciate the level of detail he puts into his work.

Thanks for the suggestions!

Chuck

Very slick tool! Thanks for pointing this out.

Ahh yes - I thought that there was a webpage that desribed how to make one somewhere. I've got so many links bookmarked, I had forgotten about this one.

This one looks to be more stable than the one I suggested. But, either method works.