George Vondriska

Spindle Turning Session 3: Prep Your Material

George Vondriska
Duration:   7  mins

Description

What types of wood are good for spindle turning? Can blanks be glued up, or do you have to look for pieces large enough for the spindle you want to turn? What type of prep work do spindle blanks require in order to be safely turned on the lathe? These questions, and more, will be answered.

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One of the really important things about getting started with spindle turning is making sure you pick the right material to practice on. What I'm looking for is close grain material that's sound throughout its length. So, close grain means that it's a nice, tight grain. A wood we don't really wanna practice on is something like pine, red oak, those are both considered open-grained woods. What's gonna give you difficulty there is that they have a tendency to tear instead of cut.

And it's something that when you're working on practicing your skills, it's one more wrinkle that you gotta overcome in order to accomplish a really good quality cut. So I'd be happier seeing you turn cherry, walnut, maple, poplar. Those are all good examples of close grain woods. I've got a chunk of poplar here. Poplar is a great practice wood if it's available in your area.

It's in the hardwood family, close-grained, not real expensive, in part because it's readily available, and part 'cause it's got kind of a funky color, so it's not as desirable as the other North American hardwoods. The other thing that's nice about this particular blank is, you can see, it's a glue up, and there's nothing wrong with doing that. As long as the faces come together and they're nice and flat, and we got a good glue seam here, this is just as sound as a solid piece. So the benefit to this is that, if you're looking for larger blanks, and you can't get wood that's really thick to cut 'em from, you can make that thickness yourself by gluing pieces face to face. Anytime you glue stuff together for the lathe, you gotta make sure it's got overnight to dry.

We don't wanna take any chance that that glue is still wet and this could come apart on you while it's spinning. So, always give it overnight, always make sure it's a good, tight bond between those pieces. We really wanna stay away from anything that's unsound. If it's got cracks or knots in it of any kind, avoid that at your introductory level of turning, because it's just too dangerous to have that stuff spinning on the lathe, could blow up on you. So close-grained, make sure the glue joints are dry, nothing wrong with doing a buildup like we have here.

And that's gonna get you started on the road to having the right material for your spindle turning. a V-block is a must-have accessory for your spindle turning. We're gonna use this in a bunch of spots in our upcoming lessons. So, very simple to make right here on the table saw. I'm using a two by four.

I did flatten one face. Two by fours are kinda icky when they come from the lumberyard. I'd like to have a little bit truer face here. Set up on the table saw is pretty simple. The blade is set to 45 degrees.

The distance from the blade to the fence is 3/4 of an inch. The distance to the highest point of the blade is an inch, that geometry will work out well for a 3 1/2 inch wide two by four. Here's how this gets cut. If you set this up, and you do those two passes, and the pyramid here doesn't come outta the center, raise the blade a little bit and cut twice again and you'll find your way to that inside corner. What we wanna make sure of course is that the blade doesn't get up so high that it's cutting through the back of the piece.

So you wanna make sure, a little check before you cut, the blade is always lower than this surface. That takes care of the process of cutting that V-block. We're gonna get a lot of mileage outta this in the next few lessons. When we mount a spindle blank on the lathe, what we're gonna need to do is drive the drive center into the end grain. A couple potential problems here.

On a hardwood, like cherry, it could be very difficult to get the spurs to engage in the end grain. Additionally, because those spurs are wedge-shaped, there's a good chance that if all we do is drive that in, we're gonna split the spindle blank, especially if it's a smaller chunk. So we can do some work here with our V-block made on the table saw, and using the bandsaw in order to create some relief for that spur center to go into. This is very simple. All I need to do is let the blank rest in the V-block.

And then I'm gonna align the top corner with the bandsaw blade, make a little cut, turn it 90 degrees and do the same thing. Because of the V-block, the cuts are automatically corner to corner when we align with the top corner, so that makes things very simple. And that's the relief that we want so that when those spurs engage in that end grain, they're gonna have a spot to go into. Makes it a lot easier to start this, automatically provides center, and it prevents splitting. Now, the other rule of the road you gotta know about with spindle turning, is that if you're gonna use a blank that's three by three or bigger, you need to take the corners off it here before we get over to the lathe.

Very simple to do with your V-block. What I'm gonna do is use a pencil and make lines that are parallel to these corners. You can do it like I'm doing with a finger and a pencil, you can do it with a ruler and a pencil, you can do it by measuring and connecting the dots. Net, net. We need lines like this, so that we can do this.

Now again, with our V-block, what that's doing is it's automatically holding our blank in the right orientation so that, one, we don't have to worry about this rocking and rolling. And two, we're gonna end up with a perfect octagon when we're done. That blank is so much safer to put on the lathe than that big three by three with the big sharp corners on there. If you wanna do this to every spindle blank that you turn, that's just fine. You have to do it for safety sake, three by three or bigger.

Now, with your V-block, I can tell you from experience, what's gonna happen over time is, the bandsaw blade's probably gonna nick it here and there, especially when we do these end cuts. I quite frequently accidentally cut into the V-block. You saw how simple they are to make. Cutting into it's not a big deal, you can always replace it, and a couple little bandsaw curfs in there don't hurt it at all. So there's some steps you need to do here at the bandsaw, using your shop-made V-block to get our spindles ready to go on the lathe.

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