How-to help on a turning

[Joe Petersen]

My son is using my metal lathe to turn a piece of cedar into a candleholder. We don't have wood tools and are using metal cutting tools. When trying to drill the end for the candle the soft cedar crushes in the 3 jaw chuck. We do have a drive spur and is how he turned the outside.

Any ideas how I can chuck it up for a solid hold? I thought of using the faceplate and making angle pieces to screw to it, but this will be very hard for him (as well as me) to center. I have attached a couple pics.

209797

209798

[Marty Eargle]

Glue the piece onto a hard wood that can hold up in the jaws. Some use Titebond or the like for this but hot glue will hold just fine. I've been using the method to create tenons on pieces for a while now and have never had the glue separate.

[Joe Watson]

Im pretty sure the first step will be to finish those Corona's.

To add too what Marty said:
Chuck up a hard wood and turn the OD to the same OD as the cedar (to make glue alignment easier) and then face it square, while still checked, glue up the cedar and then use the tail stock to apply presser using it like a clamp.

Ive only worked with cedar with flat work, not sure how well glue will hold up (or screwing to a face plate) on the end grain will work.

Im sure others will offer different approaches and experiences.

Good luck... and if you have the time, post back on what you did and how it worked, might help out someone else.

_

[Paul Heely]

In one of Lacer's skew videos he drills the hold in a tool handle by mounting the drill bit in a Jacobs chuck in the head stock and uses the tail stock to drive the handle onto the bit, after getting everything lined up.

[Paul Williams]

My first thought was take it to the drill press. However I have drilled similar pieces on my metal lath using a drive spur and a drill in the tailstock. Once the drill starts into the wood it will hold the piece against the drive.