Look out, here comes a woodturner

Hello all,

I'm primarily interested in making woodwind instruments and as ever with this kind of thing, the tricky bit is not the instruments, it's the machinery, jigs, fixtures and tolling necessary to complete operations.

My background is very much as a player and although I received some very elementary training in engineering at university two decades ago, I'm very much learning on the job. So far my efforts to date have been focused on reedmaking and woodturning. Neither of these are yet at a professional standards, but I now feel able to sit at the feet of professionals and understand their long words.

While I continue to enhance these skills my next steps are to slowly equip myself with an adequate lathe, mill, and drill. I also need to learn the fundamentals of brazing and soldering, and to work with leather.

Hi Calum,

I am also a newbie to soldering an brazing. A book I've found very informative is "A Guide to Brazing and Soldering" by Keith Hale who set up the company CuP Alloys (useful supplier for the hobbyist).

Hi Calum welcome to the forum. You are not the only woodwind instrument player repaired on here. There is a lot of information on here about soldering and brazing and have a look at Cup Alloys web site for info as well as give them a call for what best to use as well.

David

Thanks chaps, that looks like an excellent addition to my list. I've already got a couple of titles - The Complete Metalsmith by Tim McCreight and The Design And Creation Of Jewelry by Robert Von Neumann - a lot of the metalwork done on instruments is ass much the jeweler's art as the engineer's - though that said a lot of time in practice will be spent making custom sizes of tubing I can't get off the shelf!

Welcome Callum. Sounds (no pun intended) like you've got a lot of interesting projects ahead of you.

My only words of 'wisdom' are to be careful what you plan to buy, with a specialised interst like yours it would be easy to buy this and that and end up spending a lot of money on stuff that isn't really suited to your tasks.

You will for example regularly read here postings advising 'newbies' to engineering to buy the biggest you can afford as often you will find the capacity of what you have (say a lathe or milling machine) is inadequate at some point.This is sound advice for general model engineering as, usually, as experience grows so does the size and complexity of what you tackle grows. In your case, it would seem to me that generally you already know the sizes of most instruments you will be dealing with, so I would tend to think carefully and plan exactly what you are likely to actually be doing in the future and budget accordingly.

Soldering and brazing are great skills to have - simply remember the mantra - KEEP IT CLEAN - then you'll never have problems. Regards Mike

Welcome aboard!

You are unlikely to be short of help on here, for any aspect of your activities..

Possibly, your choice of lathe will be determined by, not by the maximum diameter that can be turned, but more by the distance between centres. You might be able to gain a little more by removing the Tailstock, and siting a fixed steady at the extreme of the bed. Although this will maximise the length that you can machine, you will not be able to cut outside / beyond the steady.

It may be that a longer instrument could be made in two, or even more, parts, which are subsequently joined to make a much longer "body" suitable for the lower notes.

Howard

Hi Calum,

Interesting Scots name.

Regards, Bear..

Your budget, length and diameter of materials you wish to turn will in the end determine the particular lathe you end up with also whether it will be bench or stand fixed.

If you require repeatability, that is producing multiple units of the same design you might want to consider lathe with a copy attachment. Some wood Lathes even have indexing (Harvey T40).

So I would think you might start by listing the required functions and maximum sizes down and then try to match them to what is available, both new and second hand.

The best in the second hand market I would think would be the Union Graduate, every school used to have one. The other quality European Lathes to look out for S/H are Hegner Lathes with their variable speed function although they're like hen's teeth to find. Other than that you would be mainly looking at Far East offerings where the Harvey Lathes are in my opinion some of the best out there.

Yes, I also have a relatively awkward access - I can get a pallet dumped outside the workshop door but the door is narrow and not especially level, and nor is the ground outside, so whatever I get has to fit and be moveable.

In terms of instruments, the longest single piece I'd turn would be about 550mm, so I think that something between 750-1000mm between centres would be ideal - a lot of which would be done on the wood lathe but there are some operations much more easily accomplished with handwheels. That's also big enough to be coping easily with toolmaking (the largest piece I can imagine doing would be a reamer that would have to be a little longer than the 550mm piece).

I am havering slightly between the biggest of the Asian import bench lathes (Chester had a DB11 that has just vanished from their website that would have been ideal) and small gearhead lathes like the Warco GH1230. There are second hand lathes as well but these seem popular at the moment in smaller sizes, and of course one never knows where it's been....

The GH1230 is a big lathe. However you may want a fairly large spindle bore so that you can run the body of the reamer into the headstock as you make it in stages. There are other techniques however. A member of one of my clubs who used to be a professional woodwind instrument maker mostly uses a treadle operated wood lathe which is long rather than large capacity, way smaller than a Graduate. He does most metal work on a treadle operated Exe lathe though he may have usead a bigger one for reamers.

Hi Calum. As you are interested in wood , metal, reeds and leather as well I wonder if you are after making bagpipes? If so, I'd say not to worry too much about the leatherwork at first - assuming you have a workable bag, concentrate on getting the pipes/reeds right.

The guy I bought my first set of Uilleann pipes from (Brian Howard of Sheffield) did almost all of his turning on a metalworking lathe - he reckoned that that woodworking lathes weren't accurate enough. It was at least as big as a GH1230 - you need the space to get the reamer in.

Reedmaking is a bit of a black art - weirdly, I seem to be able to make (dry) chanter reeds OK, but struggle with the drones which are supposed to be easier.

Good luck!

Robin.

The only far eastern lathe that immediately springs to mind, that might cope with work anywhere near 1,000 mm long would be the Warco BH900. This will be a rare bird, and only available now on the secondhand market.

Its smaller sisters, the Warco BH600, Chester Craftsman and possibly Engineers ToolRoom BL12-24 may be found on the secondhand market. The Chester Craftsman is still available as a new machine.

Having a 5MT bore, about 38 mm from memory, would it be possible to do some work with the material inside the Mandrel and pointing out behind the Headstock?

Howard

Hi Robin, you're quite right! Primarily interested in smallpipes, Border pipes, and possibly at some point working on GHB sets aimed at concert B flat and A. Yes, I agree bags and bellows are less of a priority - they're easy enough to source elsewhere.

Yes, most woodwind makers use metal lathes for most operations - accuracy is one thing but of course the hardness of some timbers makes a big difference too - ebony and blackwood can be like brass. My first Uilleann practice set was one of Brian's, and a better instrument than they're sometimes rated to be, I think. I know what you mean about reeds: I am trying to make a small batch every few days and slowly get them better and better over time. At least they now look like reeds, which is a big step forward! Drones are another beast entirely...

Howard, you've reminded me I need to ring Chester to ask about the Craftsman - the website lists it as 940mm between centres, which neither the price nor the photograph seem commensurate with...!

Yes, I think you're quite right, a large spindle bore seems like a necessity, and I think most parts I would make would clear a 38mm bore.

Oh dear, time to 'fess up to another unfinished project

Started a very long time ago, based on instruments described in Cocks and Bryan. The various ferrules were made from nickel silver sheet - annealed and rolled round a former then bound with a couple of pieces of iron wire to keep the edges together while silver soldering. The ferrules were then rammed back on a mandrel for polishing.

The ferrules looked fine when new but over time the silver solder discolours, leaving a dark line.

I think a thin coat of nickel plating will sort that out. These drones are ebony and the "ivory" fittings are some sort of plastic sold as a substitute back in the '80s. I have a length of African Blackwood waiting to be made into a 7 key chanter and I've amassed a collection of old EPNS cutlery for converting into keys. Perhaps I'll actually get round to finishing the set some time.

Anyway, welcome Calum and I look forward to reading about your progress.

Stay well,

Rod

Keep an eye on Warco's Used Machines site. Sometimes a BH600 turns up there, but not for long!
You could post a "Wanted" ad on here, to see if anyone wants to sell a BH600, (MAYBE even a BH900! ) or a Craftsman or a even a BL12-24.

BH600s came in either Imperial or Metric, Craftsman was only Metric and the BL12-24 is Metric but dual dialled - which is no problem for Imperial working. You can use the 120/127T compound Idler to provide a slightly finer feedrate if you so wish.

Howard

I do hope that ME including the magazine, the forum, and the hobby includes a bit of everything not just small versions of bigger things. After all we aim to use full size lathes, not models of lathes.

Back on topic may I suggest starting with a small lathe to learn about using it as you will find there are techniques for making long things on short lathes and big disc like things on small capacity machines. Apologies if you said earlier that you were a toolmaker, I forget and haven't gone back to check.

Amazing! How did you know? I'm writing it now. Shall I send it to ME or MEW?

Best wishes,

Rod

Tony you may as well leave now as this site is also the home to Model Engineer's Workshop where the emphasis is on WORKSHOP and we accept all sorts.

As for someone's comment about it being hard to find far eastern lathes with 1m between ctrs rather than look at the likes of Chesterhobbystore try their other Chestermachinetools site. Should be able to find something upto 12m between ctrs and a spindle large enough to fit a whole set of pipe into

The same size lathe can be had from Warco in the form of the WM280 variants and if you want to get a larger bore than the WM290 has similar length but 38mm bore spindle.

Good on you Rod,

I would be interested to know how you successfully managed to scale the vacuum system.
Shed ? Men's shed, or....

DaveD

edit how not if

Edited By Meunier on 06/01/2021 20:59:20