how many use glue blocks

In the days before chucks became popular and available (and less likely to rip your fingers off than metalworking chucks) it was the usual method, and it still works at a nice price.

Wood: What have you got that's cheap and available? Use it.

Glue - elmers or titebond with a sheet of paper in the middle. Some regulars here also use hot glue (glue gun type), without paper, and it seems to work for them. The paper joint requires two flat faces, and has the ability to be easily split off with a knife blade rapped into the joint line (and you can even clean up and re-use the glue block). Then you can rechuck with a jam chuck or hot glue (or a mechanical chuck with cole jaws, or a longworth chuck) and clean up the foot. In the old days (as in ignorant youngster with a lathe) I resigned myself to flat feet, and carefully sanded the bottom flat to remove the remains of paper and glue. It worked.

Some folks just turn the whole block off, and therefore don't concern themselves with making the joint easily splittable. Suit yourself.

William I use glue blocks a lot on face plate work. In my case that means up to 18" but usually no more than 14". I seldom use a chuck in face plate work and then only because some one asks me to show them how. For glue I use standard or heavy duty hot glue from a craft gun, whichever glue is on sale when I run out. The wood used is generally hard wood, likely maple or cherry and sometimes ash. What I do to get it is to cut about 4" off the end of a log to eliminate end cracks before turning. Then that 4" slab is cut on the band saw to leave flat boards that I dry for a while. Any cracked ones are fire wood and the rest are stacked for eventual glue blocks or what have you. On my site are instructions for making a glue block from a slab of wood by tapping it. The page on finishing bowls shows the blocks in action.

Basswood or aspen here, when I use 'em. Avoid woods with distinct annual rings and the tendency to split along them. Not the regular SPF 2x, that's for sure.

I use regular wood glue if dry, CA if damp. Make yourself a taper fit and keep the center mark on the opposite side to help with centering and clamping on the lathe. I won't turn until next day with standard wood glue. CA, if you spritz one face with the accelerator prior to mating, can be used after five-ten minutes.

Thing about using glue blocks for bowls is it encourages cutting from behind, which is awkward when working around the headstock, and can lead to taking some bad choices/chances with your tool angles.

It's one of the things a chuck does so well and easily that I have found myself making the glue block so that it can be gripped by the chuck! Easier to work around the headstock that way, too.

I do the same. In fact, I have a supply of oak/maple/unknown wood dunnage around that I turn round into large cylinders and keep around just for that. Enough of rapping the knuckles on the chuck I say, and a couple of inches that I can just part off gives me clearance I am more comfortable with. I cut the correct dovetail on the cylinder on the lathe, then tak it to the miter saw and cut the length I want to have a perfectly smooth and square face on which to glue my next victim.

Here's a good tip I got a long time ago. Since no matter how you wiggle, adjust, or threaten you piece if you want to rechuck it, it will never line up or rebalance correctly. However, I started numbering with a pencil the corresponding area of the glue block to match the jaws of my chuck and this has helped a lot. It works too on your piece if you are not using a glue block.

When I made earrings this year as Christmas presents, I took small pieces of 2X2 and simply glued my pieces of odds and ends on the end of them with 5 minute epoxy. So the little pieces of whatnot that I had from my pen making days of 6 -7 years ago were turned quite small very easily as I now had the clearance I needed to work them small. I put the glue on the piece, then just used a squeeze clamp to hold them in place, and the after a few hours just turned the disks for earrings in

1/8" thicknesses by holding the cylinder in the chuck and using a 1/16" parting tool. I was surprised, a piece of ebony I had yielded about 5 sets of earrings. I sanded, finished, and then parted off the pieces in just minutes.

If you will glue your odds and ends onto a small piece of wood then chuck up the wood, you will find no piece of wood is safe, no matter how small! So tiny pieces of burl, an odd configuration, you name it, it can be a smart looking piece of jewelry or a decoration on an ornament etc (like an ornament top).

Just a few thoughts...

Robert

Ok, I'm gonna get flamed for this, but I make my glue blocks out of scraps of

3/4" plywood... they work fine and turn/sand well.. Mac

First off, I am very new to this and I am self taught. I also am using a Jet minilathe and my largest bowl is about 5" so far.

I have been using glue blocks because I am not ready to invest money into chucks yet so I use screws into a 1x4 pine scrap glued to my work piece. I have sanded off flat bottoms on the finished piece using the belt sander but have lately been trying to get in with the gouge to make better looking bottoms. First one came out perfect with just a little dimple in the middle. Haven't been able to do it since. I might ought to consider using a 2x4 instead so I can get a little more room to work on the bottom.

One advantage is that the screws are located in your glue block and if don't dig into your glue block, you don't catch the screws with your parting tool. DAMHIKT.

And I use regular Elmer's yellow glue. Having already taken a pretty good hit in the nose, I'm a little leery of the idea of hot melt glue, paper glued between the piece and the glue block, and double sided tape. I want a solid joint there.

Hello William,

I have enough chucks with a wide enough range of jaws, that I seldom use a glue block; however, on those occasions when I do, I follow this procedure:

1. Mount the wood between centers and turn the outside of the bowl including a foot making sure that the foot is smooth and sqaure across except for the little nub where the tail center is located. Do not remove this little nub, you'll want the center point later.

1. Mount the waste wood, generally a hardwood scrap of some type, onto a faceplate and true up the surface. Then I turn a recess of 1/16" to 1/8" deep that the tenon of the bowl will just fit into snuggly.

2. Glue the bowl blank into the waste block with a good glue such as Titebond II, I've never had a Titebond II glue joint fail so I use it almost exclusively. On wet wood you will need some other glue, like CA or Gorilla glue.

1. Clamp the bowl to the waste block in the lathe using the tailstock as a clamp, 24 hours is the safest period to wait, but you can remove the clamp and set the glued up assembly aside after about an hour, but don't turn for several hours.

2. If you fitted the tenon on the bowl blank snuggly to the waste block, the bowl should run true and the outside will only need sanding. Hollow the bowl and finish the inside.

1. Part off the waste block just enough to free the foot of your bowl.

2. Reverse chuck the bowl to turn the foot. You can use a disk of wood like plywood mounted to a faceplate as a backing plate. Cut a recess in the disk to match the rim of your bowl and hold the bowl into the recess with the tail center. Finish turn the foot. Then use a knife or chisel to pare away the little center nub. You can use many other forms of reverse chucking as well, but this is the least expensive and very positive.

Good luck,

Fred Holder

You using a smooth set of jaws? That's the reason I love my dovetails, in or out; they _always_ line up properly. If you have 'em use the smooth jaws and make your tenon or recess just a tad bit bigger than the first point of circularity on the jaws. They snug and draw real nicely to the reference face that way.

Last piece I turned from the beech was just a tad small, so I did a triple shuffle, cutting outside on my pin jaws and making a 50mm tenon, reversing to hollow, leaving the 25mm hole in the pillar, then reversing again to a

25mm recess, with the piece at its lightest. Pretty much had to, because I had a couple radial checks that would have been curtains if I had tried to hollow on the 25 alone.

Until I made a screw chuck, a glue block is about all I had used. I use whatever wood(simple 2 x 4 or 2 x 6 works well) is handy and use a hot glue gun. Get the larger style (not the tiny one) and get slow setting glue. Allow the glue gun to warm up ten minutes or so. Otherwise the glue will set too quick and the bowl or whatever will wobble. Stand to one side of the blank as you switch the lathe on. If it looks like it is snugly fitting on the glue block and not bouncing around , start turning. Good Luck Lyndell

huge< difference in getting your piece back on correctly.

Annnnd.... you guessed it. I also do it with my spur drive. Remounting a spindle turning on the spur is a snap for almost perfect balance when you put it back on exactly the way it came off.

Just things to think about...

Robert

OK, I'll join the fray... I use glue blocks and 5-minute epoxy for smaller pieces, and always when turning stone or bone. You can shoot me, but I use 8 or 12/4 kiln-dried flat lumber Hard Maple.

As to the hot glue, Ken Bullock, a bowl turner from Canada who used to frequent the group, melted his hot glue in an electric skillet/fryer. One can find these at thrift stores and yard sales for a couple bucks - just drop in a bunch of sticks and let 'em melt. Once the glue is melted, dip the end of one of the pieces of the wood in the pool of hot glue and stick it to the other piece. Allow it to cool and off you go. The advantages of this method are that: it applies a lot of glue all at once as opposed to running the risk of the first line you run out of the glue gun cooling before the last line is completed; and it completely covers the surfaces with an even coating.

As I recall, Ken was using this method for all of his bowls, big and small.

Anyone else here have nicks in their chuck jaws from taking too close a cut with a tool?

Sure... absolutely. Just tiny ones, but those haven't happened in a while since I started adding glue blocks to make a tenon.

But I >still< get a "tiny nick" now and again from the chuck (not the other way around!) when I get to watching the tools and the shavings and not my fingers.

The last "tiny nick" I got was when I was sanding too close to the jaws and they were opened really wide and I caught my thumbnail in the jaw. Well... not really. It didn't actually "catch". The jaw just took off about a third of my thumbnail in one little tick. Man did that hurt!

But Owen... I WAS degloved! ;^)

Robert

P.S.: Still love that awful pic, and then the additional understated caution that your ring could "mar" your project surface. Looking at your pic, how about a bucket of blood on your project? Youch!

Got a nick in one of my thumbs from getting it too close to the chuck, does that count?

That's when I put the little rainbow sweat band on it.

Back when I used to tune all of my own cars, I never considered the tuneup complete until I had barked one or more knuckles. Or, on the Chrysler Slant-6, burned myself changing the oil filter from the top. Then they computerized everything. Now I only bark my knuckles, or worse, changing the plug on the rototiller - last time it was 5 stitches and a bloody sweatshirt. 'And this stain right here ...'

Green wood will move when drying, of course, but there's no need to do anything more than snug when mounting to jaws, so making the attachment points a resonable match for them means no imprints, and no problem determining when they're seated - shake the piece. Makes reasonably dry or short-term remounts a cinch. A heavy hand hurts here.

As to marking, perhaps I'm lucky, as the jaws are numbered on my chucks, even the ones I had to fit and number when KMS sent a mismatch, so circularity guaranteed when installed properly. Not that it's circularity that primarily counts in referencing. That's primarily a matter of shoulder. I can remember we used to reference mark work that was mounted to the old cast faceplates, because they never were quite true on the faces. The machined ones I have now are, but the cast crap Teknatool furnishes with the 3000 is little more than a poor joke.

Seems the old Delta dual threads had two leads, and you marked one to know where to start it on the spindle, too.

one of my reasons for thinking of using glue blocks is to save exotic wood.

Another is a constant problem of not getting a good tenon angle. I'm debating getting one of the dovetail chisels to help get the angle right when I cut a tenon. Any comments on them?

For example, I was turn> I talked to a turner recently that always uses glue blocks when turning. >

========================== LD, Just remember not to work on the tines while it's running!! {:-)

Ken Moon Webberville, TX.