I went out to the shop last night and started to work on some tool building projects I have for my Lathe. I am in the middle of building 4 new tools rests and a nice solid rest for my grinder so I can hold turnings tools steady and grind a new edge on them. Like my Skew, it has a terrible edge and I can't seem to get a good edge on it without creating an extra edge or bevel or, this or that. One other thing worth noting is with a bad and miss aligned edge on my Skew and no real skill on how to use the skew of death. I am very good at "Catches". You know what I am talking about "Whack" and the tool jumps and some extra wood goes a flying. I have ruined and tried to recover from a number of these "Learning Experiences" lately. The other night my friend the "Turning Expert" was whittling away on a nice hard piece of Mahogany I have setup for a rolling pin. He was "Skewing" along trying to get a final edge on the pin and "Smack" goes the Skew Monster. In it's wake was a nice deep tear out. So now I must figure out how to recover from this, do I make a smaller diameter pin or try one of those French Rolling pins?
Well anyway, let me get back to the Bottle Topper. After I got lost and frustrated trying to drill and figure out how to build this grinding tools rest, I went to work on the blanks for another Purplerheart bottle topper. But before that I went to the box of new cool stuff and got out my new Harbor Freight pusher thingy for my band saw. This thingy is suppose to allow me to push wood parts through my band saw at any and all angles. Well I was so not impressed with it I can't even remember it's name. Well anyway I got it out mostly together, it's didn't seem to work and I broke the handle on it within 12 second of it's initial use. Whatever, I will lock it down at 90 degrees and try to use it. What can you expect for 13 bucks I guess, others from Delta cost $150.00 or more which is more than I paid for the band saw. So once I get the pusher thingy ready I put some purple heart on the band saw and try to make a cut. uggggg, here we go again, the blade walks to the right about 3/16 of and inch and I get a cut that looks like a 3 years make it with some plastic Disney Scissors. So what do I do, I make 3 more really bad cuts and then think to adjust the guides on my band saw. Why not really make a mess of my projects vs. fixing the tools and doing it right? Well anyway that's about the way my progress in the shop was going. So now I think to myself how do I square up the end of this blank so I can drill it and tap it? I don't have a good sander with an ability to square up the end, the chop saw is too noisy to run and it will make the blank shorter, Hmmmmm maybe I can use the lathe. So I get my fancy barracuda 4 jaws clampy thingy and go to the lathe, I try to remove the safe driver and of course have too much stuff in my hands and whack the safe driver and send it across the room because I don't catch it coming out of the lathe. Oh well, I put on the clamping jaw thing of dead and mount the purple heart blank in it a couple of times to get it centered. Now I proceed to knock off the square edges and work on the end. I get out the parting tool and before I know it something is going my way, I get the end of the blank nice and square to the whirling blank of purpleness. Nice I did something and did it right, I have only been trying for about 3 hours for a victory. Now I think time to drill it. Why don't I try my new Jacobs chuck (I remembered the name of this tool) with an MT2 taper? I find my letter O drill bit put it in the chuck and zip it onto the tail stock. Set it in position mark it for 1 inch depth and zip zam wham, I drilled the blank quick as quick. Wow 2 things going my way, alright. So I take the blank out, tap the end, and mount it on my bottle topper jig. Way to go, I am making progress, I turned the rest of the blank to a nice round and trued everything up. Then I started on a design, I had no real idea what the design was going to be but I just cut away until I got an initial ball at the base of the topper. Then I made another one above it a bit smaller and then another and another. I was thinking this was pretty cool, I was now having fun and the Jazz were in a very close game against Phoenix. Well anyway I started being careful and slowly turning the topper down to a final form. I did get a few small scrolling catches, but all went well. I sanded to 600 and thought this is looking good. Now for a finish, I have tried all kinds of finishes and am still not sure what works best. So this time I use 3 coats of the friction polish I have been using on my pens and once last coat of carnuba wax.
So in the end, The Jazz lost and I was able to pull out a win over the shop. I will live to fight another day. The final design ended up with three balls that are tear drop shapped sitting on top of each other. Not bad for a rookie.
No comments:
Post a Comment