Spiral cutting

"Prometheus" wrote: (clip) Does anyone know a technique for turning these freehand with a turning chisel, and if so, is there a description of the process somewhere on the internet? (clip) ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ There are videos that teach this. A good one is by the talented British spindle turner, William White (I'm pretty sure that's his name.) Basically, it is not really a turning proces--it is done with the lathe stopped. You lay out a series of equally spaced circles in pencil, and a group of equally spaced axial lines. At this stage you have constructed "graph paper" around your wood. Then draw diagonals in the squares, and you wind up with a spiral running like a barber pole along the wood. Then you HAND CARVE the unwanted wood away, to leave a spiral.

By changing the spacing and the way you draw the diagonals, or the number of diagonals, you can create a multitude of patterns.

spiffy Sorby spiralling and texturing

Too bad I'd sell ou mine! Consider yourself lucky this time.

Saw a magzine article (turning mag) about this very thing.

Other than a few that might have been done on an ornamental lathe, your doubt is misplaced. Large spirals may be done between centers, even on a lathe as a convenient source of centers, but they are basically a hand-work process unless you have an ornamental lathe, or the equivalent (such as the router-spiral arrangement).

The best way to answer your question is to try (or simulate with a pencil instead of a chisel) what you've just suggested, and see why it is impractical. Discussing it is not nearly so educational as trying it.

Usually a really good catch with the tip of my skew gives me a gorgeous spiral, often down the entire length of my spindle!

I've had a few of those too, but they sure weren't gorgeous! So I guess it's time for me to start designing a little router carriage to make once the weather warms up and my full shop opens up again (right now it's limited to quickly cutting out blanks on the table saw while shivering violently! The lathe is in my entryway, so it has quickly become the winter woodworking tool of choice...) Aut inveniam viam aut faciam

Prometheus wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com:

Find a copy of 'Techniques of Spiral Work' by Stuart Mortimer. Mr. Mortimer covers it very well. I saw this technique demonstrated by Paul Petrie (a very talented turner) at this years woodturning symposium in Albany NY. Regards, Hank

The Article On Spiral cutting is in the Winter 2004 issue of Woodturning Design

Steven Raphael Ithaca MI

Oh, no- that's the wrong reason to envy my shop. I've got a bit of space, but it gets as low as -20 in the winter and as hot as 100 or

110 at the height of summer. Nasty stuff, weather. Luckily, it's not going to be an issue anymore- I'm closing on my first house next Wednesday, and it's got a nice big basement (about 25' x 30' with 8' ceilings) with an entrance directly into the garage (no stairs). Shop is going in the basement, and air compressor and dust collector are going into the garage, with ducts and air lines coming in. The wife gets the rest of the place because I've claimed the basement and garage, but that seems like a small price to pay for a nice shop!

Aut inveniam viam aut faciam

have been wanting to try doing spirals myself...found out that the sorby spiral system is out of reach for my wallet and the other system is about twice as much. so i gave up on buying the right tools. considered making one of the sorby style with an old motorcycle sprocket, a handle and a grinder and may try it yet.

started 5 pen blanks in spiral patterns made with different colors of wood and they look cool, but discoved that unless you are making cylindrical pens, the color patterns disappear when too much wood is turned off and parabolic patterns show up just before they disappear...still interesting to look at...will next try the same thing using triangular sections of wood instead of rectangular sections...making the cross section radial will keep the colors present, though the shapes will be harder to make.

after trying the above and discovering the problem with disappearing colors; i decided to try to carve a spiral in the spiral colored wood cylinder. using a piece of masking tape, i laid it on the cylinder in a spiral pattern and drew a line along the spiral which co-incided with the spiral pattern of wood colors. then i measured and marked off the ends of the cylinder in 1/16" and divided the total by four to produce four parallel spirals. then i used tape to mark the other three spirals equal distantly around the cylinder. i used an exacto backsaw (normally an almost useless tool except for model making) to saw along the lines on both sides in a V cut. I smoothed up the V cuts with a triangular rasp. now i have a spiral cylinder with spiral colored woods and it looks pretty interesting...don't have a clue what i'm going to do with it yet...it's too big as it is to make a pen with and i can't turn it down and keep the colors. i plan on trying this technique out on a pen once i make a blank using triangular sectioned colored woods.

so far my cost in the above experiment was an exacto backsaw and riffler rasp...cheap in comparison to the sorby and other more expensive tools! rich