Ok, thanks to you guys, you have supplied me with great sources of faceplates! Now, what is the golden rule of turning regarding what size of faceplate to use on what size of wood stock. I somehow use a 6" whenever I can, why I do not know. There must be some general principle one should follow. Regards, Lewis
The problem with rules is that they never fit anything because there are more exceptions than there are applications.
If you follow the "Rule of Thirds" for bowl design, the one that says that the best foot should be something like 1/3 the diameter of the bowl, then that means that a 6" faceplate will work for a bowl greater than 18" diameter, and the 4" plate is most suitable for a 12" minimum diameter.
Somehow, that seems appropriate.
Russ Fairfield Post Falls, Idaho http:/
I have a Delta 46-715 with riser blocks (now a 22" swing). I have turned up to 14" bowls on 3" faceplates with (8) 1/4" x 1" machine screws with hex heads power driven by a cordless drill. I never snap them and they finally wear out when the threads have scraped too many times going through the faceplate holes. The faceplates are homemade of 1" nuts welded to 1/4" plate.
Derek
I'm not contradicting Russ, but I generally shape the outside of a bowl (mostly natural edge) with a faceplate in the top. I use a 3 1/8" Fortsner bit to get my flat for the 3" faceplate. Then I turn a mortise to fit the outside of my chuck jaws. One thing I also do is leave a small tenon in the middle (about 1" diameter). In the middle of this I turn a small hole with a skew for my tailcenter when I reverse the bowl.
Then I mount the chuck and hollow the bowl with the chuck holding the bottom. In this way I loose the minimum material depth, as compared to using the faceplate on the bottom of the bowl, where I have to use a large faceplate so I can subsequently turn away screw holes or remove the screw penetrating depth plus the groove width for the parting tool. I have not had good success with trying to hot glue faceplates onto green wood by the electric frying pan method even after drying the wood using a heat gun so I do not use the wasteblock method. Using Titebond for a glue block would lose me time and require extra in-process waiting steps, which I try to avoid.
After I sand the bowl, then I remove it and jam chuck it using the tailstock and shape the inside of the foot, removing the jaw marks. Then I mark with one of the superfine or extrafine Sharpies and hit with the heatgun for a few seconds to dry the Sharpie solvent so my Daly's Teak oil finish components do not transport the dye away from where I originally put it, which has happened in some cases.
Derek
P.S. Thanks, Russ for the tip on the Daly's Teak Oil. I like it a lot better than plain tung oil which takes way too long do dry and doesn't build near as fast.
go as big as possible. The more surface are the more holdiong power and the less liklihood of flex
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