Turning a sphere

I've been working on a sphere collection of different species of woods in the same size range. I've turned over 90 so far and have about 130+ woods waiting. I don't have my methods on my web site but can describe it here. I start with a piece between centers. Turn it into a cylinder. Based on the diameter of the cylinder I have templates that I use to mark out the ends of the sphere and the 1/3 points. I then part down on the ends to a small diameter, say 1/4" to 1/2" depending on the size of the wood. I then remove the wood from the 1/3 points out the ends at a 45 degree angle. ____ / \ | | \_____/ sort of

I then part off being careful not to tearout the end grain. I then place the piece in a jam chuck (

)turning the piece 90 degrees from the previous orientation. Be careful tocheck that you have the piece mounted as balanced as possible. Turn awaythe corners, you can see the ghosts of these if you look closely. Turn thepiece 90 degrees to the third axis and repeat turning away corners. Repeatuntil it has reached an acceptable shape.When I first started I used to use different templates to achieve a goodround sphere but after the first 30 or 40 I found I could do a very good jobby eye. Once in a while I trouble getting a piece round but its fairlyrare.

If I didn't do a good job describing the method you could always check out Mike Darlow's book "Woodturning Methods". He has about 20 different methods in that book.

Hi Fipster. I do the newsletter for our woodturning club and a couple of months ago, put an article on Allan Batty's method of turning spheres. If you click on

it ison about the 8th page.Hope it helps

Paul

For a template, I look in my metal scrap collection for any machined ring that's close in size but not bigger than the desired diameter--such as a bearing race, washer, short piece of tubing, etc. Even a short piece of PVC drainpipe cut off square with a chopsaw works great. A slightly grimy or rusty tapered bearing race (outer ring), when rubbed on an almost finished spinning sphere, will show the high spots to turn off. Or a clean one will burnish the sphere's surface, but won't be as easy to see. Carry the idea further, and put a cutting edge on the opening of a steel tube or ring. But that might be cheating LOL!

Ken Grunke

I often turn them by hand and eyeball, removing corners at 45°, then the

22.5° and 67.5° corners, and then the... you get the idea. I do this for wood, plastic, metal, you name it.

For larger runs I setup my sphere cutting tool I made.