look into how they make round wooden pencils?
"DougVL" wrote in message
...
I've been looking for ways to make small dowels. Well, really they'll be
knitting needles and arrows.
I'm still hoping to find a jig design that I like for cutting dowels from
square stock. Until then, I rip squares and plane them fairly close to
round in a long v-block. Knitting needle diameters range from about 1/8
inch to 3/8 inch. Knitting needles would be 8 to 15 inches long. Arrows
have less size variability, about 5/16 to 3/8 inch diameter and 30 inches
long.
Next I want to sand them to accurate diameter, and very smooth. I've
looked
into the methods used for centerless grinding similar things made of
steel,
but haven't figured out a way to do it at home on wooden parts.
It seems like the smoothest surface will come from sanding with the grain,
though, which is not the way a centerless grinder works.
I've got a drill press with sanding drum and I clamped a v-notched guide
next to the drum and tried sanding that way, rotating and pushing the wood
shaft between the drum and guide notch. But it failed miserably, probably
because I seem to need infeed and outfeed guides to hold the stock
straight
and steady. The initial trial was with strips of bamboo which I split and
then planed to approximately 1/4 inch in diameter. The bamboo isn't
completely straight, so as I turned my end, the rest wiggles around. It
seems like that shouldn't matter with the v-block holding the workpiece at
a
constant distance from the sanding drum, but it sure didn't work.
Does anyone know how dowels are sanded in large quantity? I mean what
kind
of machinery and what shapes of abrasive "cutter" do they use?
As well as the sanding drum, I also have 1x42 and 2x48 inch belt
sander/grinders that I could try making guide fixtures for. If I knew
what
to do!
If I can find a good way to do this, I'll take some pictures and write up
a
description and put the info on my website for others to see.
Thanks for any help!
--
Doug VanderLaan, K8RFT
http://users.netonecom.net/~swordman/GetThePoint.htm
"Sometimes history doesn't repeat itself. It just yells
'can't you remember anything I've told you?' and lets
fly with a club.
"To be great is to be misunderstood." Ralph Waldo Emerson
-- John W. Cambell Jr.