I picked up a few brass candle sticks in garage sales. I wanted to use one
for a brass sundial. It has a long stem and a cup for the candle. The stem
is irregular with some patterns on it.

I cut the stem off where I thought it would be just about right length for
the gnomon. I tried to "turn" it in my old drill press. It turned out not so
bad, I put a 10-32 thread on one end and tried to re-profile the rest of
it. It is about 5 cm long so I thought I would use the live center I have
for my sanding drums.
like this one:

http://www.leevalley.com/wood/page.a...02&cat=1,42500

This is where I run into a bit of a problem - drilling the centre hole.

The candlestick was made in India, I am not sure how. Either way not very
well so the whole thing is a bit asymmetrical. I tried to determine the
centre of the end to drill a concentric hole but found it almost impossible.
In the end when hooked up to the live centre (which is loose on the drill
press table) the live centre was running around in a small circle whatever I
did.

Now I understand (I hope!) that on a lathe the live centre on the taistock
is lined up with the centre of the chuck on the head stock and the hole will
be drilled in the centre by default. Not having a lathe the best way I found
to drill centres in a round stock is to make a paper tube around it and use
a tight fitting transfer punch to mark the centre. This works fine if the
stock is cylindrical, not on a candle stick stem which is not.

I found a thread on this group from 2004 which provided several options of
which the only one viable in my situation would have been to use a 3-jaw
chuck to center under the drill press spindle and then substitute the centre
drill. And I am indeed looking for a cheap 3-jaw chuck.

Are there any other suggestions ("Buy a lathe!" does not count)?

The other thing that puzzles me (and please note that the nearest I have
been to a lathe is in the movies and picutres in books) is how do you start
turning something that is irregular in shape? Or even how do you turn a
round piece out of a square stock? Does it not do horrible things to the
cutting tool when it contacts only at the corners? Or is there a trick to
get the shape roughly round first somehow? I want to change the shape of the
brass cup but the initial attempt was somewhat discouraging.

Thanks for all your patience,

--
Michael Koblic,
Campbell River, BC