Bonnie Klein threading jig

[Terry Quiram]

A fellow turning club member spent a day in my shop and we set up and played with his threading jig. His jig is mounted to a dedicated Jet mini. It seemed to be the cat's meow for threading lidded boxes. Bill left the jig with me to play with. I watched Bonnie's dvd and saw how effertless she was able to make the jig work. Bill's jig one was stiff and hard to use so I dis-assembled it, cleaned it, put lube where needed and put it back together. Much better, but in order to keep the movements smooth and realitive effertless some of the adjustments had to be loose resulting in non parallel presentation of the work piece to the cutter. I eventually made a couple boxes with decent threads but all the fiddleing around was just way too much for me.

For those of you that own a Klein jig did you have the same problems? How did you overcome them?

[Scott Conners]

Terry, I don't know about Bonnie;s jig, but I've heard good things about the jigs from http://bestwoodtools.com/ though I haven't' had a chance to try one out myself.

[Bernie Weishapl]

I would be interested in the one from bestwoods. Hopefully someone has used it.

[Reed Gray]

Bernie,
I got my Bonnie Klein threading jig a few months ago, after a 3 day workshop with her. I did have a problem with it. The threads were cutting deeper on one side than the other. After making all possible adjustments to the jig that I could think of, I took out the main rod (for advacing the box into the thread cutter) I put a straight edge onto the rod, and it had a slight bend to it. I contacted Bonnie about it, and she said she didn't think that was a problem, but would go out to the shop and find me a straight one. She checked the ones in her shop, and found that they were all bent. She had used a new source for her all thread rod for the main shaft. She had another one made for me, and when it was in place, it worked perfectly. The threaded boxes are selling well for me, I just hope I can do them faster. She did mention that it was about time to update her video on making them. A little slack in the bar is necessary, but wouldn't work for metal work. If you have any more questions, let me know. I have done 2 demos with it, and will be doing a workshop with one club in February. If I was coming back to St. Joe (where I grew up), I would try to get together with you. I only get back there during Christmas though.

robo hippy

[Reed Gray]

OOPS!
I misread, thought it was Bernie who posted this. Then saw it over at WC.
robo hippy

[Jeff Nicol]

Terry, I built my own and it works like a champ! I am going to make some more thread blocks for different threads soon. Here are some pics.

Jeff

[Ralph Lindberg]

I would be interested in the one from bestwoods. Hopefully someone has used it.

Never used either. But, from a couple talks with Bonnie, she considers the Bestwoods one an (unlicensed) clone of her's.

That being said, on paper, I think it's got more capabilities then Bonnie's

[Reed Gray]

The biggest difference that I can see between the two is that Bonnie's comes only with a 16 tpi thread. To me, the biggest advantage here is that when you go to adjust the bottom so that the threads line up, you have to remove at most 1/16 of an inch for one full rotation of the lid. With 8 tpi, that goes to 1/8 inch. A lot of difference, and you would probably have to cut more threads if you have to go that much, especially if your grain in the box isn't perfectly straight. Bonnie did mention that there was a copy of her jig out there. I personally don't know of any mechanical differences, but any of them would be adptations from what is done in the metal world.
robo hippy

[Grant Wilkinson]

Jeff: Yours look great! Can you please tell me what the bit is that you are using to cut the threads? Thank you.

[Don Watson]

Is the bit for cutting the thread available in the UK ?

take care
Don W

[Keith Spaniel]

Jeff,
Looks nice and simple, but not simple enough for me to figure out.

It looks like a XY table and you have a spacer under the chuck so that the headstock and chuck are perfectly in center of each other. Is that correct??
Could you explain a little on how to make one?
thanks,
Keith

[Leo Van Der Loo]

Jeff: Yours look great! Can you please tell me what the bit is that you are using to cut the threads? Thank you.

Grant, McMaster-Carr carries this and larger, called double sided 60° milling cutters, here's the # for the 3/4" size, if you go there, just type in the ## and it will take you there, 29755A17 ,the price quoted is $27.60, HTH :)

[Grant Wilkinson]

Tks much, Leo.

[Leo Van Der Loo]

Grant here's some more info on a treader setup, you might know this already, but just in case you don't there's a lot of good info in there besides the thread cutting design :D :)

http://atbq.qc.ca/jm2/thread.htm

[Ryan Baker]

Bernie,
I contacted Bonnie about it, and she said she didn't think that was a problem, but would go out to the shop and find me a straight one. She checked the ones in her shop, and found that they were all bent.


That's interesting. I noticed that the one Richard Raffan was using in his boxes DVD also had a bent rod.