Friday, January 7, 2011

Making up the handles

We have finished the hardening process and cleaned up the blades ready for handles.
The 2 tools in his blog are used with a lighter touch and so I went for a shorter handle that I could get a friim grip on an still control easily. As you can see I like big thick handles - my hands are quite large.
I had some dogwood blanks in my offcut bin so I used a 15-1/2 " piece for these handles and mounted the whole length to avoid loosing any during refining.
Here is the blank roughed out to start the hole for the tool shank.
<a href="http://good-times.webshots.com/photo/2408707980101907180gFwyJB%22%3E%3Cimg src="http://inlinethumb32.webshots.com/15839/2408707980101907180S600x600Q85.jpg" alt="handle1"></a>!
Next step I put on my old spindle steady rest to hold the handle centered for drilling a hole to recieve the tool shank.
It's just four sealed bearings running on pieces of miter track in a piece of plywood. (baltic birch.)
Seems to do the trick but you have to watch for tracks from the metal bearings .
It's on my list for a remake as I cobbled this one together for this job. It was off and old 12" swing lathe I had for a few years and I just never got around to making a new one.
My new lathe is 16" swing so I needed to modify the base a bit.

<a href="http://good-times.webshots.com/photo/2766268140101907180WQqkmu%22%3E%3Cimg src="http://inlinethumb12.webshots.com/16139/2766268140101907180S600x600Q85.jpg" alt="handle2"></a>

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