wood turning

He does bigger stuff too; I can remember him commenting on Facebook a while ago;

He'd had a quote accepted, and the customer asked what CNC lathe he was using. When he said he did it all by eye, the customer cancelled the order as they wanted all the spindles to be the same.

( He's "The Woodturners" on Facebook if you want to follow his occasional videos.)

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Thanks, Bill ... but I am still resisting Facebook

We did, however, watch the YouTube video of him hand-turning a pretty good sphere.

... Very impressed: MichaelG.

Hi Nathan,

I have found the Diamond Tool Cutter from Eccentric Engineering is excellent for turning wood, particularly if you use a round rather than a square tool. I have attached a couple of pictures showing the finish I got on the end grain of a piece of Kanuka wood. The finish is as good as that from a skew chisel but is of course dead flat. I use a similar cutter arrangement in my ball turner. There is very little sanding required after turning.

What did you buy and how much was the postage?

Re my previous post. It should have been "near enough" with a standard metal cutting insert. Nathan.

Hi ega,

Yes, Kanuka is a bigger version of Manuka (as per the honey).

Hi Nathan,

The tool angle on the ball turner is the same as on the diamond tool holder and the tool was ground using the jig which came with the holder. I don't suppose it's surprising the setup works well with wood as it's similar to how a gouge is presented to the work on a woodworking lathe. The wood peels off the work without tearing, even on end grain which makes it ideal for ball turning.

Regards,

Alan

For turning wooden balls, get a bit of steel tube and make sure the cutting end is square and sharpen it like a leather punch with the taper on the outside, use this tool after you have roughed out the ball using the whole front edge to cut. To get a number of uniform sized balls, just make then the size of the bore of the tube, when the ball is to size it just pops into the tube.

Turning wood in the metal lathe with metal turning tools, hard, fine grain wood is good(mature Rimu in NZ), just don't use soft new Radiata Pine, you'll have a real hard job even on a wood lathe with the sharpest tools.

Ian S C

That looks like a pretty good way to do it - do you mean feed the tube-tool in square to the axis, from the side?

I managed *sort of * OK with my hand-gouge on Zebrano for Saturn:-

But sticking a caliper across it a few ways will expose its out-of-roundness pretty mercilessly...

Probably not viable if you’re only making one or two but ball turning jigs are available for wood turning Lathes and you get a perfect result every time, and much quicker. How long a piece of wood will stay that way is anyone guess though!

I thought I posted this but I get my wood turning carbide cutters from Glenn Teagle.

**LINK**

Good point. GHT covers this procedure in his Manual where he mentions that the method was used for turning billiard balls.

That reminds me that there is a specialised trade in the manufacture and maintenance of cues; I wonder if they employ hand turning.

https://www.peradon.co.uk/cue-manufacture.aspx

Try this.

The cheap ones may be turned but it looks like the good ones are hand planed:

**LINK**

KWIL and Vic:

Excellent video - thank you.

My impression is that only the splice is planed; there was a shot of what looked like a lathe near the start.

Some interesting similarities with metalworking: seasoning the stock and rolling on surface plate to check for straightness.

But sticking a caliper across it a few ways will expose its out-of-roundness pretty mercilessly...

Don't worry, Saturn is out of round itself by a ratio of about 9:1

Neil

Posted by Neil Wyatt on 24/10/2018 16:58:05:

Posted by Mick B1 on 24/10/2018 13:32:07:

But sticking a caliper across it a few ways will expose its out-of-roundness pretty mercilessly...

Don't worry, Saturn is out of round itself by a ratio of about 9:1

Neil

...but not in the plane mine is...

For some reason my earlier post has the wrong link. It should be this one.

**LINK**

It clearly shows the hand planning process.

Edited By Vic on 24/10/2018 17:59:12

With tools held in a metal lathe the finish is not always too good as hand held woodturning tools you rub the bevel before cutting the wood so in effect are planing the wood. Ball are easy to do by hand if only doing small quantities as some of the jigs can be expensive.

This was done free hand and is near as possible a perfect sphere it did require the sharpening of the tool quite a bit as ply knocks off the edge very quick. The sphere is 4" diameter.

This came third in the last woodworking show at Alexander palace some years ago