4" Ridgid Faceplate.

[dustytools]

My wife and I stopped at one of those traveling tool sales that come through here once a year or so. While browsing around I found this faceplate that would thread up to my old Craftsman lathe and thought for $8 why not try it out. Ive never turnrd a bowl or platter before but Im now one step closer. Any do's or dont's that I should know about before I dive in. Ive turned several spindles before but never a bowl or platter. Thanks,Terry.

 

[aquan8tor]

I'm new to it, but I've been having a lot of fun for the past couple months with turning. Bowls are very different than spindles; I can do bowls fine but I really don't know how to use spindle tools very well. Don't use a spindle gouge on a bowl. Because the angles are really very different, and the flutes are much much deeper on a bowl gouge, spindle gouges can catch badly. Keep your gouges sharp! Do you already have a grinding jig for sharpening?? Check out this site for some homemade sharpening jigs:
http://www.woodturningonline.com/Turning/Turning_articles.html#sharpening


I broke down and bought a $45 oneway varigrind jig, but I did make my own "wolverine" style jig like this one from fine woodworking:
http://www.taunton.com/finewoodworking/pdf/ShopBuiltJig.pdf


Also, I bought a chuck, so I can do some dovetail recesses and reverse mount the bowl to turn the foot flat, like this:

This is helpful so you don't waste the part of the wood where you screwed it to the faceplate. You might already know this but, if not, when you screw the blank onto the faceplate, you can shape the bottom of the bowl, turn a recess for the chuck, then unscrew it from the faceplate, turn it around and mount it in the chuck, hollow it out, and mount it on another attatchment for the chuck, called cole jaws, which hold the bowl with rubber bumpers so you can (very very gently, as it isn't nearly as secure as when screwed down) turn off the edges of the recess to a nice bottom, sort of like in my pic. Those are some of the first that I've finish turned, so they get better with time. Hope this helps. Also, a tip that I coul've used is to drill a hole to the depth you want the bowl to end up. It keeps you from going through the bottom & making a really, really pretty funnel. :angry2: :hmm3grin2orange: :hmm3grin2orange:

Hope to see you on the other side, or site as it were.....

 

[andrewspens]

What is the plate made from?

I bought a couple of cheapy cast aluminum ones from Grizzly awhile back. Stay away from these or similar. I had a bad catch and the faceplate shattered. Turned aluminum is great, but the cast ones have whacked out grain structure and maybe some voids. It is not worth the few dollars saved. If you got cast iron or turned steel, even better, the mass helps when roughing out.

 

[aquan8tor]

I bought a couple of cheapy cast aluminum ones from Grizzly awhile back. Stay away from these or similar. I had a bad catch and the faceplate shattered. Turned aluminum is great, but the cast ones have whacked out grain structure and maybe some voids. It is not worth the few dollars saved. If you got cast iron or turned steel, even better, the mass helps when roughing out.

The Delta ones (3" dia. only) are also CRAP! The old rockwell deltas use aluminum plates; they are milled, I think, but you must use washers under your screws or you'll end up widening the screw holes dramatically. Also, use hex head sheet metal screws instead of regular cone head or round head screws; this allows you to use a box-end wrench to tighten the screws without removing the blank from the lathe. Also, sheet metal screws' wide sharp edges hold much better than wood screws' tight threads when you're dealing with green wood. Don't overtighten.

 

[dustytools]

The plate is made out of cast iron. Aquan8tor, I would love to see some pics of some of your chucks and reverse mounting set-up. This looks like its gonna be a whole different animal from making rocking chairs and turning spindles. Thanks for the replies.

 

[aquan8tor]

The plate is made out of cast iron. Aquan8tor, I would love to see some pics of some of your chucks and reverse mounting set-up. This looks like its gonna be a whole different animal from making rocking chairs and turning spindles. Thanks for the replies.

Well, I ran out of batteries in the camera, so I didn't get a picture of the cole jaw setup, but I'll post that at some point. Here's a few pics of the PSI chuck with a mulberry burl bowl that I made for the lady whose tree it was. I got paid for taking it down, and got to keep all the wood!!

first pic:

The inside of the bowl, with its first coat of "seal coat" dewaxed shellac--I used boiled linseed oil, which apparently keeps lacquer from adhering well. I'm going to put another couple coats on, wet sanding in between, as mulberry seems to have some pretty open pores that show with the first coat of shellac. I'm hoping the slurry created when wet sanding will fill them without too much trouble.

second & third pic:

the outside of the bowl, with a good shot of my VERY novice job of turning the foot. I used a somewhat dull spindle gouge to try to put details in the foot, and ended up just tearing some of the grain, leaving it pretty rough. I'm going to put a few more coats of shellac over it to try to smooth it over, as I'm really NOT wanting to reverse turn this one. It is pretty thin, and I'm not risking anything with this one. The pics don't do it justice; the wood is beautiful.

fourth pic:

a closeup of the bowl and the chuck jaws, so you get an idea of what is going on exactly. One tip if you get a chuck is that they really work best if the recess is just about the same size as the closed diameter of the jaws. Otherwise, if they have to open quite a bit to get a grip, you're putting pressure on four small points in the curve of those jaws, instead of using the entire surface to distribute the force evenly. If you expand the jaws too much, if you get a tool catch, you're likely to break the bowl out of the chuck, only to watch it spin around your floor, and hopefully not break in the process, or worse, hit you in the face or knock something over, etc. Before ever using the lathe, I was warned by an experienced turner to always always use a faceshield when faceplate turning. It might be annoying, but he said he had some teeth broken when a bowl broke on the lathe & the pieces hit him in the face.

 

[aquan8tor]

Here are some pics of the riser blocks that I just added onto the lathe. Some might chastize me for doing this, as it makes it more dangerous, but I glued up some black locust that I milled last year (HARD AS S@%T!!!) to 3.0 inches, to give me some more clearance around the lathe, and let me spin slightly larger pieces. Although this theoretically increases my swing to 17 inches, I'm not going to tackle anything that big on this lathe; its an older rockwell/delta from the '70's, and just doesn't have enough iron in it to be stable without walking around the shed when spinning a really big blank. I don't have pics of the motor setup, but I swapped out the dinky 1/2 HP motor for a 1.5HP leeson motor, and retrofitted a "jackshaft" reducing pulley setup. I had to router out grooves that would allow the motor and reducing pulley to slide back and forth, as the entire assembly has to be moved back and forth to keep the belt aligned with the pulley on the headstock if you want to change speeds. This is worth it though, as I now can turn a blank at about 300 RPM, vs. 900 before.

 

[aquan8tor]

Some more pics:

Here's another mulberry piece that I roughed out while screwed to a faceplate. I'm going to use this one on a glue block, because I can't get a wide enough recess for chuck jaws without risking there being too little wood to keep a secure hold on the blank.

Here's a pic of shallow recess I'll use for a glue block "tenon" to fit into. I'll use a narrow parting tool to cut it off the sacrificial glue block when its hollowed, sanded, and finished. Then, I'll use the cole jaw setup, or my soon to be made longworth chuck to secure it while I turn a very slight concave depression in the bottom.

This pic is just an example of a glue block; its not what I'll use for the shallow bowl here; I just had it on a faceplate from turning a big cherry dish on the outboard spindle side of the lathe, for my lady for christmas. I used a parting tool to take it off. Its uneven along the edge b/c the glue block was a bit wider than the foot of the bowl to start out. I used the parting tool to take it down a bit so that I could come in from the side and have a little clearance, making a very slightly diagonal cut into the foot to remove it. You can see the residual CA glue left on the block that I used to adhere the bowl to the glue block. CA is good stuff.

The completed cherry bowl....

 

[dustytools]

Very interesting pictures Nathan!! Thanks for sharing them.