November 2009: Inside This Issue

Welcome to all of our new U.S. and International subscribers and thank you for joining us! This is the thirty-sixth edition of Lathe Talk, a free monthly newsletter (e-zine) for subscribers of Steve Russell’s "Woodturning Videos Plus" woodturning website. This newsletter will be delivered on or about the end of each month to the email address you indicated on your sign-up form. All back issues of this newsletter are available to subscribers here.

Lathe Talk will offer tips and tricks to make your woodturning easier and more productive. I’ll also show you ways to save money in your studio, so you can stretch your hard earned money. In addition, we will periodically offer subscribers only specials on our videos and e-books. If you like this e-zine, please do a friend and me a favor by forwarding it to them. If a friend DID forward this to you and you like what you read, please subscribe by visiting our subscription page.

Happy Holidays from Our Family to Yours: Best wishes to you and yours for a safe, happy and healthy holiday season and a prosperous new year!

Many of you know that I’m the Founding President of the Lone Star Woodturners Association, Inc., an AAW affiliated member chapter and a Texas non-profit educational corporation (our 1023 application for 501(c)3 status is pending), located in The Woodlands, Texas - just north of Houston. I’m in the early stages of planning a new hands-on woodturning symposium for visually and physically disabled individuals.

Through the years, I have received numerous emails from individuals who are blind and want to learn more about woodturning. Few educational centers will allow them to join a woodturning class because they are blind. Some of these individuals have built their own outdoor decks, build beautiful furniture, frame their own houses, rebuild cars, complete their own plumbing repairs and are accomplished woodturners now, yet they are sometimes prevented from learning how to turn, or learning more about woodturning because of someone’s limited perception of what a blind person can do.

“Your Time To Turn” will be the first woodturning symposium of its kind (as far as I know) that will be specifically designed for the blind, as well as those with physical impairments such as an inability to stand for long periods, those without/who have a lost an arm/hand, or lost one or both of their legs. Instead of a traditional symposium where you watch a demonstrator, Your Time To Turn will be a hands-on symposium, where qualified instructors will be present to help guide attendees through the skill building exercises.

My hope is that we can get some corporate sponsorship that will allow us to award grants to help defray the travel and expense costs for some of the attendees who are unemployed, as well as award a mini-lathe setup (lathe, some tools, face shield, chuck etc) for some of the attendees, so they can return home and build upon the skills they gained at the symposium.

Woodturning should be accessible to anyone who has a desire to learn! The necessary skills can be adapted to accommodate many different types of disabilities, including paraplegics (witness Oneway’s new 1236SD Sit Down Lathe that features a pivoting bedway, so you can use it whilst seated in a chair, or a wheel chair), are without a limb or for those who are blind, as well as many other types of disabilities.

You Can Help: I would appreciate your thoughts on our symposium and how we might structure the symposium so the attendees receive the best learning experience possible. If you know of a blind woodturner, or another woodturner with physical disabilities who is a woodturner, please let me know. I would also like to start a list of individuals who might be interested in attending (with or without any woodturning experience), or those who would like to volunteer as an instructor, video camera/digital camera operator, or as a demonstrator’s assistant at the symposium.

Our clubs 501(c)3 tax exemption application is pending with the IRS and should be received in a couple of months, well before the symposium starts (tentatively planned for the latter part of 2010). Once our tax exemption is received, contributions to the Lone Star Woodturners Association can be earmarked for this symposium and will be tax deductible to the donor, according to applicable IRS guidelines.

If you have coordinated, or helped to coordinate a woodturning symposium, or a hands-on teaching symposium before, I would appreciate any help or assistance you can offer. If you have a symposium procedures manual, or a “Do Not Forget This Equipment List” for woodturning symposiums, please email me a copy. If you know of any companies who might want to help support this unique learning experience for the disabled with financial donations, or with donations of tools or equipment, please let me know.

Thanks for your comments and for helping me to assist people with visual and physical disabilities to learn more about the art and craft of woodturning.

Steve Russell
LSWA President
“Your Time To Turn” – A Woodturning Symposium for the Visually and Physically Disabled
Email me for more information

Need to Change Your Lathe Talk Email Address? Links are available at the end of this newsletter to change/update your email address. I can also change the address for you if you prefer, but to do so I need your old email address and your new address. As always, your email address for Lathe Talk is kept totally confidential in every respect.

Link To Our Free Woodturning Educational Libraries: If you belong to a woodturning club or association, please consider asking your Webmaster to add a link to our website's free educational libraries. There are currently 42 articles in the Main Library, 39 articles in the Tips Library and more than 650 terms in the Multimedia Glossary Library, covering beginner to advanced topics.

Please help us to share these valuable learning resources with other turners in your woodturning clubs, associations, or on your own woodturning website links page. The direct link to our Main Educational Library is shown below:

http://www.woodturningvideosplus.com/woodturning-education-articles.html

Our Woodturning Tips Library is located here:

http://www.woodturningvideosplus.com/woodturning-tips.html

Our Multimedia Woodturning Glossary is located here:

http://www.woodturningvideosplus.com/woodturning-glossary.html

Thanks in advance for your support of our educational efforts.

Woodturning Videos Plus Blog: For our new subscribers, we have a free Blog/RSS feed on our website. You can keep up with any changes made to the website including new product releases, new additions or updates to the education library, e-zine mail out dates, special news and much more. It's easy to subscribe to our blog. For additional information on what a Blog is and how it operates, check out What is RSS?

10% Off Any Oder! Take an additional 10% off any regular or sale priced e-Book, DVD video, or Combo pack from our website. To access this special offer, enter the coupon code 9988 on the shopping cart page in the coupon box area. Click the "recalculate" button and your discount will show on the screen. Offer ends December 28, 2009 at 12:01 midnight, CST. Additional subscriber only discounts and specials will be offered in future editions of Lathe Talk.

Overview

In recent years the availability of various types of man-made/industrial diamond tools for use in a woodturning studio has grown tremendously. You can easily find a plethora of diamond dressers for truing your grinding wheels, honing your woodturning tools and bench chisels and even for mounting on rotary power tools for power honing, cutting and shaping needs. Luckily, the cost of these tools has remained affordable, as they have become an indispensable tool for woodturners.

Diamond Dressing Tools for Grinding Wheels

Various diamond dressers
for dry grinder wheels

There are two main types of diamond tools used for dressing, cleaning and truing the face of dry grinding wheels. 1) “T” style multi-diamond, or chip dressers, 2) Single-point diamond tools. Of the two, the “T” style tools seem to be the most popular. “T” style diamond dressers are frequently used freehand, in conjunction with the grinder's tool rest, or on the flat plate of a sharpening jig. To improve the quality of the dressing, you can mount them in a jig like the Woodcut Tru-grind, which allows standard “T” style dressers to be used in the jig.

Craft Supplies USA's "T"
style diamond wheel dressers

Freehand dressing of grinding wheels is not as accurate as using the dresser in a jig, but with careful attention you can produce a flat and clean surface in short order. If you prefer the highest degree of accuracy when dressing dry grinding wheels, choose a single point tool. Most single point tools must be used with a jig system to keep the tools square to the face of the wheel. Manufacturers like Kelton Tools, Oneway and others have diamond dressing jigs available that are easy to setup and use for maintaining dry grinding wheels.

This single point diamond wheel dresser
is used in conjunction with a sharpening
jig to clean and true the face of the wheel.

The advantage of a single point tool over a multi-diamond dresser is obvious… Single point diamond dressers typically feature fine adjustment controls that advance the diamond forward in tiny increments, allowing you to remove the absolute minimal amount of abrasive each time you use the dresser. Single-point diamond dressers are typically mounted onto a sliding base plate, or another fixed mounting type of that increases the accuracy of the dressing.

Single point diamond dressing tools take slightly longer to setup and use than swiping a “T” style dresser across the face of the wheel, but they produce a much more accurate and flatter wheel face than you can get when freehand dressing. Having said that, most of the woodturners I know use some version of a “T” style diamond dresser on the grinder's tool rest, or on the flat plate of their sharpening jig.

Craft Supplies diamond wheel
dresser contains 1.5 karats of diamond chips.

I’ve been using a couple of Craft Supplies USA’s “T” style diamond wheel dressers for years and they still look new. They have 1.5 carats of diamond chips in the head, suspended in a silicon carbide matrix and they are just the right size for use in Woodcut’s Tru-Grind sharpening jig. Another type of “T” style diamond dresser features diamonds on the surface of the head only, not throughout the head like Craft Supplies USA’s “T” style diamond dressers.

These diamond wheel dressers feature diamonds
only on the top surface of the tool.

Although these dressers will also work quite well, they will not last as long as the diamond dressers with diamonds throughout the head, since the diamonds are only on the top surface of the tool. If you need to purchase a “T” style diamond dresser, take a look at Craft Supplies USA’s lifetime diamond dresser. It’s the best multi-diamond dresser I’ve ever used. Cost is about $40.00.

Close-up view of the diamond wheel dressers.

Diamond Honing Tools for Woodturning Tools

Various diamond hones for use
with woodturning tools and accessories.

If you need a diamond-honing tool for your woodturning tools or accessories, you’re in luck! There are dozens of different styles to choose from, including those that are made to be used freehand and a few that can be mounted in a power tool.

These large diamond bench hones
feature a dual-sided design with a different
diamond grit on each side.

Diamond honing plates are also available for use on a workbench. Prices range from very affordable to high as a cat’s back, depending on the manufacturer and the number and quality of diamonds used.

This 1" diamond wheel can be
used in any rotary tool for honing
or sharpening tool steels.

These EZE-LAP diamond hones
are my favorite hand-held diamond hones.

The main diamond hones I use in my studio include small flat hones like EZE-LAP, that are great for the occasional touch up of a sharpened edge and diamond rod hones (straight and tapered), for use on the interior of bowl and spindle gouge flutes and hook tools.

Diamond hones are also available
in straight or tapered rod form.

I also really like the credit card sized diamond hones that work great for honing carbide cutters on my Arbortech Mini-Grinder, refreshing the edges on pen mills and other various other tools.

These diamond hones feature a perforated design
in the honing face that reduces metal
build-up on the hone.

Specialty Diamond Tools

This diamond hone features diamonds
on the outer surface of the curved
and tapered body.

Specialty hones are also available with curved tapers, for use with carving gouges and select turning tools. These hones make it easier to hone difficult curved surfaces. Diamond sharpening/honing bits are also available for use with specialty turning tools like hook tools and some boring bar cutters. I’ve found that the quality varies quite a bit with diamond bits and you pay for what you get.

This diamond cone bit (lower) is
used to sharpen this Andre Martel hook tool.

The lower end diamond bits seem to lose their diamonds very quickly and the uniformity of the diamonds on the surface varies from batch to batch. By contrast, the more expensive diamond bits last much longer and produce a better sharpened/honed surface when viewed under magnification. If you use any specialty tools that require diamond bits for sharpening or honing the cutting edges, you will be better served paying a few dollars more for higher quality bits.

Overview

A few of the ball bearing
live centres I use in my studio.

One of the least glamorous tools in a woodturner's toolbox has to be revolving ball bearing live centres. Ball bearing centres are also known as “live” centres; they are used to help hold work on the lathe when working between centres, and also with some faceplate turning when added security is needed. The ball bearings in the live centre allow the end of the centre to rotate with the work piece, as opposed to a dead centre that does not rotate and remains stationary in the tailstock whilst the work rotates.

The face of a standard woodturning dead
centre does not move during turning.

Live centres come in many different shapes and sizes, most woodturners use a #1, #2 or a #3 Morse Taper live centre. My Oneway 2436 uses a #3 Morse Taper live centre in the tailstock, whereas most lathes use the smaller #2 Morse Taper live centre. Some small pen lathes use a #1 Morse Taper fitting in the tailstock. Of the two, I prefer a tailstock centre that rotates and I’ve rarely used a dead centre in the last fourteen years.

When I started turning in junior high school, all of our Delta lathes were equipped with dead centres for the tailstock and I vividly recall having to lubricate the end of the centre to prevent it from burning and smoking the end of the wood when turning. I’ve had good luck with most of my live centres through the years, but along the way I found out that not all live centres are created equally. The design and quality of the components plays a major role in how well the centre will work over time.

Like so many things in life, you pay for what you get and since live centres are used so frequently, it pays to have a good one on your lathe that will not only meet your needs now, but also remain flexible enough to adapt to your needs in the future.

Live Centre Round-up

Oneway's #3MT revolving
centre with accessories.

Oneway Revolving Centre – In my fourteen years as a professional woodturner, the Oneway Revolving Centre has been the best live centre I’ve ever used. It is fitted to a #3MT for my lathe, so you know it’s made for big and heavy “Texas” sized loads. It has operated flawlessly for me through the years and it has been flexible enough to allow me to adapt it on the odd occasion where I needed a custom fixing. This revolving centre is available in other sizes as well, to fit smaller lathes.

Oneway's live centre with the
optional bull nose cone attached.

One great feature of this live centre is the screw threads on the front of the cup centre. This threaded portion allows the use of threaded accessories to further enhance the usefulness of the centre. I frequently use the large aluminum cone (known as a bull nose cone) when reverse turning small vases.

Oneway's revolving live centre
with the full point cone installed.

The full point cone is also very useful for many tasks. A chuck adapter is available that will replicate popular spindle thread sizes, so you can use the live centre to reverse mount a project that is still mounted to a faceplate, or in chuck. This is a very useful feature for those of us who are into vacuum chucking, as it accurately centres the work on the vacuum chuck, eliminating lots of tedious mounting and remounting.

The bull nose cone on Oneway's
live centre can also be installed
with the small end forward.

Jet Tools large revolving live centre.

Jet Large Live Centre – Jet Tools came out with a live centre that looks similar to the Oneway revolving centre a few years ago. I have used it numerous times over the years and it has worked very well. I have not disassembled it yet, so I do not know how it differs on the inside from Oneway’s revolving centre. Back in the day when I was demonstrating every week, I used a large Jet live centre regularly for several of my demos and it was an excellent live centre.

These 60-degree blunt point live
centres from Axminster fit perfectly
into the end of pen mandrels.

60-Degree Blunt Point – A good quality 60-degree live centre is a necessity in most woodturning studios. I purchased several (Axminster) 60-degree live centres a few years ago and they have all held up quite well. If you turn pens, you know that most pen mandrels are bored on the end of the mandrel rod to accept a 60-degree live centre. These live centres fit perfectly into my pen mandrels and do not bottom out because of a centre point that is too long, like other live centres I have tried through the years.

Dale Nish (of Craft Supplies USA fame) came out with a modified 60-degree live centre recently that changes 5/16” on the end of the cone point to 20-degrees. This helps to reduce splitting and makes it easier to penetrate the end grain on the wood when mounting spindle blanks and other projects.

Multi-tip live centres allow
various centre points to be installed
for use with different projects.

Multi-Tip Live Centre – This is a great live centre to have on hand if you are working on lots of small to medium sized projects on your lathe. It is basically a live centre that can be fitted with various tip configurations. This allows you to use one live centre for numerous jobs, which maximizes your tool investment. When I first started out fourteen years ago, I used one of these (Axminster) and it worked very well for small and medium sized projects.

I was working on a Woodfast 910V lathe at the time (known as the Big Green Monster) that had a swing of 20” over the bedway. I found that when I used this live centre on larger projects like heavy bowls, it developed some slop in the bearings. I quickly replaced the damaged centre and purchased an identical replacement.

I only use it for small and medium sized projects now, having replaced my old Woodfast with a Oneway 2436 several years ago. Craft Supplies has a similar multi-tip centre in their catalog now from Robert Sorby that looks very good. It comes with six different replaceable centre points, which allows it to be used for a variety of projects. I have not used the Robert Sorby version of this centre, but it looks similar to my old Axminster unit.

Jet Small Live Centre (Mini-lathe version)

Jet Tools small revolving live centre.

If you own a Jet mini-lathe, you should have received a revolving live centre as a part of your accessories package. This live centre works well for some tasks, but the centre point that came with my Jet mini is too long for use with a pen mandrel and it does not appear to be a 60-degree point. When you try to use it on a pen mandrel, the point will bottom out, which prevents the centre point from seating accurately in the end of the mandrel.

This can cause the mandrel to vibrate when turning a pen, which compromises the accuracy of the pen barrels. I find that it’s too long for several other projects as well, so I rarely use it anymore. If you have one of these live centres now and you want to turn pens, you’ll need to purchase a good quality 60-degree live centre for use with your pens. The original Jet live centre can still be used for projects where the long centre point does not complicate your mounting or reverse turning requirements.

Failures Are Rare

In the fourteen years I’ve had my studio, I’ve only experienced one problem with a live centre, the aforementioned Axminster multi-point live centre that developed a wee bit of slop in the bearings after using it with larger bowl blanks. To be fair to Axminster, that centre was not designed for use with larger projects, but you use what you have sometimes… My replacement Axminster multi-point live centre has operated perfectly for many years and I continue to use it on small and medium sized projects.

The design of this live centre allows
dust and debris to enter the bearing races.

My #3MT Oneway revolving live centre has seen more than its share of massive bowl blanks through the years (some weighing a few hundred pounds), as well as a few thousand other production bowl blanks and it continues to perform flawlessly. If you want a big, bad live centre that eats bowl blanks for breakfast, the Oneway revolving live centre is sure hard to beat. The optional bull nose cone (large cone) and the chuck adapter complete this exceptionally well-made live centre.

Our subscriber base has grown for 36 straight months! Thanks to all of our new and existing subscribers for our continued record setting subscription pace! Our subscriber base continues to see explosive growth every month.

We're proud of the fact that Lathe Talk is now being distributed to thousands and thousands of professional and hobby woodturners all over the world. If you have any suggestions or topics for Lathe Talk, or any other comments, please let me know.

Help Us Spread The Word: Please let your woodturning friends know about my Lathe Talk newsletter and encourage them to subscribe. Working together, we can make Lathe Talk a valuable educational resource for woodturners around the world. Take care and let me know if I can help you with any of your woodturning questions, or challenges.

Steve