Don Orr
10-21-2006, 9:48 PM
After the recent excellent tutorial on making tops by Terry Q., someone asked me to elaborate on what I meant by my "repetoire" of tops and share some info about them.
You might find some information in the project section at www.woodturningonline.com (http://www.woodturningonline.com).
The picture enclosed shows the 3 types I make most often. On the left is an old fashioned throw top. Nothing fancy, no special point, fast and easy. Kind of hard to get the hang of for me to get it to spin. You wind the string around the bottom with a loop around your middle finger. Hold the top with the point UP, toss it out and give a little flip of the wrist just before the string runs out. Clear as mud I'm sure.
The larger top in the middle is made of 3 pieces of wood total. The upper part I call the guide knob, is removable and has a brass rod (1/8") glued into it. The lower part has a kind of pulley where you wrap the string and is glued into the base. You wrap the string snuggly around the pulley, put the guide knob in the hole in the pulley, pull the string briskly to get it spinning, remove the guide knob, and watch it go! I call them executive tops and usually put a nice finish on them.
The ones on the right are simple finger tops that I can crank out in about 4 minutes from a 2" x2" blank of hardwood about 3" long. Sometimes I will put a long blank in the chuck and do 4 or 5 in a row from the same blank. I use them as a quick demo when someone comes to the house and has never seem woodturning before and them give it to them. They usually get a kick out of it.
There is a chapter on tops in Bonnie Klein's most recent book "Classic Woodturning Projects" starting on page 42 and shows the basic finger top.
Hope this may be of interest to some of you.
You might find some information in the project section at www.woodturningonline.com (http://www.woodturningonline.com).
The picture enclosed shows the 3 types I make most often. On the left is an old fashioned throw top. Nothing fancy, no special point, fast and easy. Kind of hard to get the hang of for me to get it to spin. You wind the string around the bottom with a loop around your middle finger. Hold the top with the point UP, toss it out and give a little flip of the wrist just before the string runs out. Clear as mud I'm sure.
The larger top in the middle is made of 3 pieces of wood total. The upper part I call the guide knob, is removable and has a brass rod (1/8") glued into it. The lower part has a kind of pulley where you wrap the string and is glued into the base. You wrap the string snuggly around the pulley, put the guide knob in the hole in the pulley, pull the string briskly to get it spinning, remove the guide knob, and watch it go! I call them executive tops and usually put a nice finish on them.
The ones on the right are simple finger tops that I can crank out in about 4 minutes from a 2" x2" blank of hardwood about 3" long. Sometimes I will put a long blank in the chuck and do 4 or 5 in a row from the same blank. I use them as a quick demo when someone comes to the house and has never seem woodturning before and them give it to them. They usually get a kick out of it.
There is a chapter on tops in Bonnie Klein's most recent book "Classic Woodturning Projects" starting on page 42 and shows the basic finger top.
Hope this may be of interest to some of you.