Tuesday, October 6, 2020

Making a revolving centre for turning spheres on the lathe

 






















Tools and materials I propose:

Lathe

Wood turning tools set

Chuck kit

Mini machinist’s lathe

Forstner bit set


In this video I used the metal lathe to make a live centre for the woodturning lathe. To make it I used a piece of aluminium, a ball bearing, wood and leather. I made this tool for making spheres but you can make different adaptors and use it in many different situations. 


To make my live centre I took an old live centre as a reference. I didn’t have the right tools to measure the taper with accuracy so I did a couple of trials. I finally set my lathe at half a degree and it seems to work.


I made the piece out of aluminium but steel is a better option but harder to work with. 


Anyway first of all I turned the tenon to fit my ball bearing. I then reversed chucked the piece and started working on the morse taper. 


Then I epoxied the bearing in place.


Now it was time to work on the wood piece. I used a piece of olive wood I had. 


First I created the tenon for my chuck. Then I used several forstner bits to create a hole that fit my bearing. I reversed chucked the piece again and created a taper. Then I drilled a hole in front. I used my hook tool to slightly hollow the front. 


Then I used some contact cement to glue a piece of leather in front. The leather prevents the wood from being damaged as the tailstock presses on it. 


And basically my little tool was ready. Although I am not sure I got the taper right it seems to work really nicely. But that was it, see you soon with a new project video.



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