miniature captured ring goblets

[JohnC Lucas]

Many of you all have not seen these. I got into a battle with another guy trying to make the worlds smallest goblet. My smallest is .023" about the thickness of a sheet of paper. While doing that everyone kept asking why don't you put a captured ring on it. So I tried and here is the smallest I could do. The ring on the smallest is as small as the 0 on the date on a penny. This is yellow heart.

[John K Jordan]

You are certifiably insane. Hey, do you have any pictures of some of the tools you had to make to turn these?

JKJ

[Roger Chandler]

Extraordinary! Amazing! When you started packing for your upcoming move you must have packed your bag of marbles, and didn’t realize it! :rolleyes:

[Glenn C Roberts]

I would be interested in the secrets of the entire process including the type of wood, the orientation, tools, speed, all that stuff. Is this something you would share, or are you challenging the rest of us? I would need the steady hand of a robot.

[John K Jordan]

I would be interested in the secrets of the entire process including the type of wood, the orientation, ...

Me too. I do remember John telling me once that on the smallest goblets a single wood pore in the stem would blow up the piece.

JKJ

[Mel Fulks]

John, my first reaction to seeing the photo was; the goblets are nice but what's the the deal with the giant penny? You
might get a call from one of those Believe It Or Not museum buyers! Keep the collection away from the kitchen .....or you might inadvertantly gobble it !

[Dean S Walker]

WOW, not much else to say

[JohnC Lucas]

The wood was Yellow heart but my smallest goblet ever was cherry. If there are almost microscopic defects in the wood it will fail no matter what it is because the step and rings are so tiny. I make my own tools out of piano wire. Mostly I use a skew and a fluteless gouge. For the really tiny ones I used .012" piano wire mounted in thicker wire which is mounted in a 1/4" aluminum handle. I use a 20x stereo microscope to turn them. I turn them on my Powermatic 3520 with a micro tool rest of my own design.

[Roger Chandler]

T I turn them on my Powermatic 3520 with a micro tool rest of my own design. Hey John....you need a bigger lathe to turn such projects! :rolleyes: Seriously, I'm amazed at your innovation in tooling and skills to pull off such tiny items!

[Glenn C Roberts]

Thankx John for the info. Since I lack the dexterity to be a brain surgeon, I would have to fabricate some sort of XYZ axis control with a LARGE magnifying lens. But I am curious as to how to orient the goblet so that, as John K mentioned, there is no weakness in the tiny spec of material. Do you look at the end grain and pick the most dense, poreless part of the growth segment? Once that is determined (if that is what you do), getting it in the center of rotation seems like an impossible task.

[JohnC Lucas]

Glen It's purely luck with regards to the quality of the wood. The defects that make the stem or goblet edge or captured rings break are just about microscopic and I can't see them. I just turn and if it breaks I pull up another blank and try again. When I was trying to make the smallest goblet I was using Cherry quite successfully down to a certain size. Then everything blew up so I switched to other woods and finally found Yellow heart which seemed to work for a while and then they started blowing up. Out of frustration I still had some small cherry left so I tried again and now each one was successful so I just kept going smaller. Close grain woods that i though would work like ebony, cocobolo, holly and other all blew up.

[John K Jordan]

...Cherry ...Yellow heart ... Close grain woods that i though would work like ebony, cocobolo, holly and other all blew up.

Did you try boxwood or dogwood? I also wondered if stabilized wood would be an better.

[JohnC Lucas]

I did not try boxwood. I did try dogwood and holly and several other things that I thought would work. Don't remember now why I didn't continue to use those. Well yea Holly was too flexible and it broke the stems. don't remember dogwood.

[tom lucas]

Amazing! Just amazing!

[James Combs]

I would have major if not insurmountable problems with the penny size one, and the others, not even remotely within my turning world. Fantastic!

[John K Jordan]

I would have major if not insurmountable problems with the penny size one, and the others, not even remotely within my turning world. Fantastic!

James, have you tried turned woods like ebony for small things? For me it works best for relatively small things since the grain is so fine and it polishes well. Drive down to TN one day and visit and I'll supply the ebony! (I'm north of Knoxville.) We can try turning some small ones.

John Lucas is WAY above my pay grade. The smallest goblet I've ever tried will fit on this penny with a few other things. (I need to make some smaller tops and try for a smaller goblet some day - they are all too big for the scale of the "magic" wand:

396624

I'm not brave enough yet to try one with captured rings.

JKJ