Originally Posted by
Wally Dickerman
Spend an hour with me in my shop and I'll pass along more tips than you can remember...75 years of turning worth of them.
My saying is...Use sandpaper like your rich uncle or your brother-in-law was paying for it.
When examining the profile of a bowl or hollow form, hold a contrasting colored piece of paper behind it. White paper for dark colored wood, black emery paper or sandpaper for light colored wood. Easy to see those little flat spots in an otherwise nice curve.
I have a 1 inch ID piece of pvc pipe of the right length to slip on the post of each of my tool rests. Always the right height, and never changes when I adjust the angle of the rest.
I use DS tape quite a lot. How to remove the piece? Just turn a 1/2 inch deep piece of wood that'll slip inside a faceplate. To remove the turned piece, slip the little piece of wood inside the threaded part of the facplate, thread the faceplate on the spindle and Voila...it easily pushes the turned piece off the faceplate.... no muss no fuss.
I turned a plug with a hole bored in it to fit into the hose on my shop vac. I inserted a 12 inch long, 1 inch dia soft plastic hose. I prefer to vac the chips out of a HF rather than blow them out. I already have enough airborn dust in my shop.
Some of you may remeber the oversize wood handwheel that I posted a while back...much better than the small handwheels lathes are equipped with.
When using a screwchuck, most of the time you don't need the full length of the screw...I use a 1/4 inch plywood shim.
A tip I learned from Ray Allen. He used it before glueing on the next segmented ring...I cut 1 inch wide x 12 or more inches long piece of 3/4 inch plywood. Using a thin line of yellow glue, I apply a strip of 80 grit sandpaper to both sides of the plywood. I make several at a time. Flattens out the bottom of a bowl blank to glue on a glue block in seconds. I do the same using 320 sandpaper to prepare a HF rim for a collar.
To apply finish on a piece I pour a small amount of finishing oil or Deft in a bathroom paper cup. The cup is held securely in a 4 x 4 piece of 2 x 4 wood with the correct size hole bored part way through. I use a fresh paper cup to clean the brush with solvent.
I bought a 3/4 x 10 tap from Enco for about $20, to fit the threads on my Oneway live center. PM has the same. I've made threaded hardwood caps of various sizes to hold turned pieces without piercing them. Works great to finish the bottoms of bowls.
I have a lot more..that'll do for now.
When''s that book coming out Russell?