knitting needles

Mac davis commented on the needles over on binaries and said that it must have been a challenge to turn the so uniformly. Yes and no.

You need a collet chuck, a micrometer and a full size lathe. The reason a mini-lathe (I tried on my Jet mini) is that the headstock is too short and you get a lot of flop in the stock extending through and out of the headstock. The full size, having a larger (longer) headstock cuts down on the flop considerably.

The thought of laying out between $86 and $186 for a collet made me hesitate to try the needles. However, there is a video [three parts], (ideal for the more frugal among us :-) ) on Youtube about turning your own collets.

I tried a couple and finally got one that worked well. I then used one of the failures in the tail stock (placed about 4" from the headstock) to keep flop down on the finished needle. Just remeber, you have to size the hole in the collet for the "diagonial" on square stock. You can turn 1/4" stock with one of these, but that is about the limit.

As for the "mike" it is an absolute necessity - or some "fixed" instrument of the precise size you want to turn. A caliper will not hold the size, no matter how tightly you tighen it down.

The proceedure is really simple, you never turn more than an inch from the collet, which means you turn to nearly the diameter, sand to the diameter and wax, all at one inch at a time. The hardest part is turning the first inch - getting the taper on the point and establishing the diameter.

I asked my daughter about what to finish them with and she said "Use wax, becuse less is more." So, they are finished with "kerf's Wood Creme." I love that stuff, gives a wonderful warm luster to the wood and almost no sheen.

The buttons are drilled to match the needle size on the lathe then turned to the required size, and glued on.

The needles on binaries are size 5 or .1464" in diameter and the standard

14" in length.

Deb