Pastor of Muppets
Full Member
Morning ladies and gents,
I had an awful weekend in the workshop this weekend......
I went to the shop Friday evening and cut, drilled and glues a number of blanks up (2 siroccos, a mistral rb, a Chairman fp, and a few 7mm twist pens of various names.) I drill on the lathe using my nova chuck and Nova's pen jaws. The tubes were scuffed with 200g and are pretty a pretty snug fit and then glued in place with a decent amount of gorilla glue (the foamy expanding stuff).
I went down Saturday and trimmed the blanks using an end mill in a hand drill and due to family obligations left it at that.
Sunday morning comes and I have a day to myself to spend in the shop. Hooray!! I put one of the sirocco blanks on the mandrel with enough spacers that I can screw the knurled nut down to hold it in place then put the mandrel saver over the end and tightened it down gently. then started to turn.
I am using carbide tools and had put them across the diamond stone that morning before starting. All was going well the wood was turning into shavings beautifully and shaping was coming along nicely and I was getting close to the bushes. Then suddenly at the left hand end (headstock) the blank cracked and came away from the tube.
A few naughty words later I turned the rest of the wood and glue off the tube and put it back in the box. the Next sirocco blank went on the mandrel in exactly the same way and exactly the same happened ( the definition of insanity is to repeat a process and expect a different outcome!).
So I took the mandrel out and popped my centres in to check the alignment of the head stock and everything was fine.
So on to the first of the 7mm twist pens..... I'm imagining by now you can guess where this is going three blanks all at the headstock end giving way in exactly the same way.
At this point I looked at my Mistral blanks a pen I'm turning for myself and decided it to chuck up an ash bowl blank about 6" square and reduce it to sawdust just because!
I'm now hesitant to turn the mistrals because I am obviously doing something very wrong to lose so many blanks in exactly the same way.
Any help and advice is greatly received!!
Cheers
Andy
P.S. Apologies for a a very wordy post
I had an awful weekend in the workshop this weekend......
I went to the shop Friday evening and cut, drilled and glues a number of blanks up (2 siroccos, a mistral rb, a Chairman fp, and a few 7mm twist pens of various names.) I drill on the lathe using my nova chuck and Nova's pen jaws. The tubes were scuffed with 200g and are pretty a pretty snug fit and then glued in place with a decent amount of gorilla glue (the foamy expanding stuff).
I went down Saturday and trimmed the blanks using an end mill in a hand drill and due to family obligations left it at that.
Sunday morning comes and I have a day to myself to spend in the shop. Hooray!! I put one of the sirocco blanks on the mandrel with enough spacers that I can screw the knurled nut down to hold it in place then put the mandrel saver over the end and tightened it down gently. then started to turn.
I am using carbide tools and had put them across the diamond stone that morning before starting. All was going well the wood was turning into shavings beautifully and shaping was coming along nicely and I was getting close to the bushes. Then suddenly at the left hand end (headstock) the blank cracked and came away from the tube.
A few naughty words later I turned the rest of the wood and glue off the tube and put it back in the box. the Next sirocco blank went on the mandrel in exactly the same way and exactly the same happened ( the definition of insanity is to repeat a process and expect a different outcome!).
So I took the mandrel out and popped my centres in to check the alignment of the head stock and everything was fine.
So on to the first of the 7mm twist pens..... I'm imagining by now you can guess where this is going three blanks all at the headstock end giving way in exactly the same way.
At this point I looked at my Mistral blanks a pen I'm turning for myself and decided it to chuck up an ash bowl blank about 6" square and reduce it to sawdust just because!
I'm now hesitant to turn the mistrals because I am obviously doing something very wrong to lose so many blanks in exactly the same way.
Any help and advice is greatly received!!
Cheers
Andy
P.S. Apologies for a a very wordy post