squaring bottle stoppers

[Stephen Hibbs]

I just got the stuff required to make a few bottle stoppers, but I'm wondering, how do you guys get the ends perfectly flush on the stopper chuck, and later on the stopper? It seems like it's easy to get it flat, but drilling at a perfect 90 degrees (or pi/2 radians ;) ) into the flush end would be a bit tricky.

[Joe Melton]

1) You can chuck up the blank and face the end off.
2) You can square up the end with a side on the table saw, radial arm saw, or chop/mitre saw.
With either method, the end in which you plan to drill should end up perpendicular (orthogonal!) to the sides, assuming the sides are parallel.
Of course, you can do #1 and then drill the blank on the lathe while still in the chuck, if you want and have the necessary tooling.
I don't think these need to be real accurate.
Joe

[Mike Vickery]

what i do is I drill and tap the hole in the wood and put it on the stopper mandrel. I the use a diamond parting tool and turn the face very slightly concave that way the edge always stays flush. inless you feal like putting a nice ding in your tool you cannot cut all the way to the mandrel so just go as close as you can to the mandrel threads and after turning take it off of the mandrel and by hand use a chisel to get rid of the small ring near the mandrel thread.

[Lee DeRaud]

What Joe said.

"Necessary tooling" consists of:
http://www.harborfreight.com/cpi/ctaf/displayitem.taf?Itemnumber=42340

[Stephen Hibbs]

thanks guys, chances are I won't be able to tackle this until next weekend, but I'll tell you how it works out.

[Bernie Weishapl]

Stephan chuck it up and face it off with a skew chisel. Then it is flat. Drill it while in the chuck like Joe said. Works.

[Frank Fusco]

As Joe suggested, I squared the face on the lathe. Then I also put a small bevel on the edge where it meets the metal. That creates a small shadow that helps hide sins.