How to make fluted tapered columns

[lou sansone]

Dear fellow ww's

I thought that some of you might like to see a little jig that I have come up with for doing little tapered fluted columns. These particualr ones are going to be part of the tall case clock that I am currently working on. They are about .75" in diameter and about 15" long.

1. you have all seen pictures of such jigs, I just wanted to show this simiple one here that is easily expandable. All you do is change the aluminum angle to longer or shorter ones for different size columns.

2. Because the column is tapered one side of the jig is shorter than the other

3. To make sure you are centered I use a little wooden block that holds a small knife blade. line up the blade with the lathe center at either end and you will be all set

4. The little laminate trimmer is ideal for this type of a job because it is so light

5. I have a divider head on my lathe that I use to index the part. That is the most difficult part.

hope this helps those who may want to try fluted tapered columns

lou

[lou sansone]

one more picture .... the column is pretty dinkey so you have to be real carefull with the division of the flutes. each flute is 0.125" and the land between about 0.062" .... if you are not right on division, boy do you see it..

[Jim Dunn]

That's going to be a beautiful clock if the columns are any indication of the rest of your work. Is that just a face plate with a degree divider scale on it? Or is that part of a divider head system? Just wondering:)

[Bruce Page]

Lou, that’s a very cool setup. I use to have a Hardinge 40 to 1 dividing head for my mill but traded it for a right angle head, sometimes I wish I still had it. Be sure to post pic’s of the tall clock!

[Jim Dunn]

Bruce answered my question as well as your post answered it. But are your using the face plate only or the entire dividing head assembly? Also how is the jig held down? Your picture really doesn't show that.

[lou sansone]

Hi jim

I do not have a divider head. That would be a very nice setup. My lathe is equipped with a faceplate on the inboard side of the head stock. I had a machinest drill 60 holes, spaced 10 degrees apart around the outside of the plate ( which I am not using in this case , but have on other projects ) . On the edge of the plate I glued a metric tape measure that has 611 "ticks" on it. That is just what the circumference turns out to be. By trial and error I figure out what a decent looking spacing of the flutes and the land between the flutes is equal to as far as the ticks are concerned. So for this column it turned out that about every 51 ticks I needed to route a flute. That allowed me to have 12 flutes ( 12x51=612 ticks ) on the column which looked pretty good to me.

I hold the jig down with a couple of c clamps once it is lined up with the absolute center of the head and tail stock. This was the first time I did tapered columns and that worried me a little. As I said in my post, I cut down the one end support by 1/16" so that the angle track was parallel with the tapered column. It worked pretty good. Eventually I will have to make some new jigs, but that is not a big deal.

I like this little light weight jig because you can see what you are doing. I have seen lots of other monster looking jigs that looked like they would fight you all the way.

enjoy
lou

[Keith Christopher]

Lou


You better submit that to Woodsmith ! Awesome idea ! I can think of TONS more applications ! You could even make a dowled circle from plywood to turn for the same affect. AWESOME !


Keith