I am wondering how to put fluting onto a spindle. By fluting I mean the lengthwise linear recesses that are just like little wood dowels have that are meant to allow glue to move up and throughout the hole.
Anyway wondering if anyone knows about how to do them or perhaps a jig idea.
Thanks
Van
Replies
Wish I had a pic for you. Build a cradle that holds the spindle by the ends. Over the spindle, you want a set of rails which your router will glide on. The router is held to the rails and held side to side by a mounting plate. The cradle is like a simple lathe. You want to be able to rotate the stock. On one end of the cradle make a disk and mark out the degrees of the circle - or the divisions which you want to cut the flutes on. You want to be able to stop and hold the stock at a precise location, so anchor the disk to one end securely and make a pin, notch, indent, whatever you want, so that as you rotate it you can stop it cold where you want it. Rout one at a time. You can clamp stop blocks on the rails to keep the sled cutting the same length throughout.
"The child is grown / The dream is gone / And I have become / Comfortably numb " lyrics by Roger Waters
pic would be great but I get where you goin. Thanks it make sense.
Van
>> The cradle is like a simple lathe.
I've seen articles in FWW by guys who used their lathes for this setup. They attached some kind of indexing disk to the headstock, clamped a piece of something smooth and flat to the bed for a work table, and built a bracket for the router that held the router horizontal with bit centerline at the same height as the lathe centerline. Then all you need is a longitudinal guide bar on the table to set the depth of the flutes, and end stops if required. I think it would be easier to do tapered spindles with this setup than with the cradle and rails, but that's just conjecture, I've never tried either way.
Once you figure out how to do the indexing, either on the lathe or with the cradle and rails, it wouldn't be too hard to invent a fence that would allow you to cut the flutes with a molding plane, if you had some aversion to routers.
HIJACK WARNING - MAJOR DIGRESSION
Talking or router milling on a turned piece reminds me of a question I've often wondered about. I often read warnings about turning large work at high speeds, especially when starting out with chunks of logs that could be badly balance. One I saw was a 60" diameter bricklayed bowl that was going to be a carved shell canopy for a fancy cabinet. The reason people do this despite the danger is that if the work turns too slowly, the tools won't cut right.
So here's my question. Why not slow the work way down and do the initial roughing cuts with a router? Pick an RPM that would give you a surface speed about the same as you would push a router manually. Then when you've cut off the unbalanced parts, or the rough parts that might grab a tool, or whatever made it dangerous to run at the speed you'd like, crank the speed back up and carry on with normal turning tools. Especially when the hazard is out of balance stock it seems to me that router milling would be attractive. At 5 RPM, no conceivable misbalance is going to endanger anybody.
HIJACK WARNING - MAJOR DIGRESSION
I've experimented with using a router to cut do the initial shaping of a blank mounted on a lather, worked fine despite the fact that the lowest speed on the cheap lathe I used was 250rpm
John
Of course where there's will there's way.
No aversion to router, however, I am curious about what a "molding plane" is and can do as I don't believe I've seen one. Do you know of a link that can show me how it works. Sounds cool.
Van
In the olden days, before power tools and machinery, people made hand planes with custom shapes. Some were complete profiles, and some were simple concave and convex curves in a variety of sizes, which could be used to cut very intricate profiles. Here's an end view of one with a complete profile.
http://www.mjdtools.com/tools/graphics/33504_lg.jpg
Here's a site with some really bad pictures (the problem might be in my browser) of early planes. One of the pictures shows five plane irons. The two one the left are the simple curves, which were called rounds and hollows. The other three are examples of complete (or at least more complicated) profiles.
http://www.history.org/Almanack/life/tools/tlpla.cfm
Later on, people developed metal body planes with interchangeable irons that could cut a variety of different profiles. I couldn't find any good pictures of those.
Google for "molding plane" and you'll find a bunch of informative sites.
I've got a pretty good mental picture of this setup, but the big question that I have is how do you set the indexing so that you have the right number of flutes in the spindle (and don't end up cutting into the first flute with your last?
Seems to me that some shop math, in conjunction with a test/scrap piece, is in order.
Cut a flute in a piece of scrap that has been turned to the same diameter as your work piece. Then measure the width of that flute.
Now calculate the circumference of the work piece, and determine how many flutes will fit. Set up your indexing based on that.
And of course, it seems that you could make the flutes wider or narrower, by varying the depth of cut, or changing bits. And thuse you can make the flutes fit the indexing, rather than vice-versa.
Vast projects should not be founded on half vast ideas.
thanks, I was afraid there was some math involved here... was hoping for a shop trick to make it quick and easy.
Well, here's a shop trick that involves no math at all.
Cut more scraps to the same diameter on the lathe. Play around with varying widths of flute, and indexes.
When you have a combination that is pleasing, write everything down.
Vast projects should not be founded on half vast ideas.
Craftsman,
yeh! I shudder when I hear that name...
sells an adapter to lathes that does just that,, you can do flutes, spirals, ropes and all kinds of fun stuff with it..
See, now the thread is unhijacked!
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