On Sun, 26 Nov 2006 09:40:17 -0800, "Leif Thorvaldson"
wrote:


======Haephestian fun, eh? Sure you are on the right newsgroup?? I would
have thought it might be Promethean fun!*G*

Nah... Promethean fun would be more on the order of building a boat or
having a bonfire. Hammering hot metal is Haephestus's thing. No need
to make those poor old Greek gods go get their union stewards!

But I figure it's the right newsgroup. Got my first spun bowl done
this evening, and it was far more woodturning than anything else
(making the mandrel). Not *too* tough, but there are definately more
than a few tricks I have yet to learn with it.

A few points of interest for anyone looking to goof around with it:

- Copper will cut nicely with a standard wood blade on a bandsaw when
making blanks. (A good use for my little benchtop one, I'd say)

- Skipping the annealing of the blanks is a bad idea- my first attempt
has a bit of a crack in the upper edge from not doing that. It's a
little goofy looking- smooth and shiny *except* for the one spot where
it looks like someone attacked with a pair of tin snips.

-Despite the advice in the spinning tutorials I found, I used my chuck
to hold the mandrel, and it worked fine (they suggest faceplate
mounting only, but everything I found on the subject was fairly old.)

- Ridges in the bowl will sand out easily, and sanding marks polish
out nicely with the buffer- (copper) is almost less sanding than wood,
though the sandpaper loads quickly.

- If you're not doing production work (and I'd imagine that'd be most
people fooling with it) soft wood works fine for a mandrel. I just
turned a bit of willow, waxed it, and went to work. Leaving the
tearout alone (as opposed to sanding it all away) didn't seem to
affect the finished metal at all.

Should be a nice addition to my turnings in the future- the big bonus
for me will be when I get good enough to incorporate the two to make
wooden turnings with metal turned over portions of them while they're
on the lathe (for bases, caps, etc.) Seems like a good solution for
covering faceplate screw holes or less than perfect chuck recesses- or
even just to put a contrasting shiny bit on a nice piece.

Now I've got to see how much work wants to let me raid the scrap rack
for suitable blank material. Sheet metal is -way- too expensive at
the hardware store!