Posts Tagged ‘diy’


Update To My DIY Lathe Steady Rest

Also viewable on YouTube I’ve been using my home made steady rest for over a year. During this time, I’ve thought of a couple of improvements: Use locknuts in place of the nuts. Vibration in use caused nuts to come loose and fall off. Replace the base that mounts it to the lathe so that […]

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My DIY Lathe Steady Rest

After using my new steady rest turning the travel mug, many viewer requested more information about the steady rest. So here we go. It’s make from baltic birch plywood with layers glued together as necessary for thickness. The wheels came from a pair of roller blades I purchased at a local thrift store. It works […]

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Easy Wood Faceplates

I’ve been using wood faceplates instead of metal faceplates with wood scrap blocks. A wood faceplate eliminates the risk of hitting a screw while turning. I can have as many wood faceplates as I want and keep it on the project until the project is complete. I can make any size faceplate that may be […]

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Easy Bracelet Chuck

In my last video I turned a segmented bracelet using my new home made bracelet chuck. It is an expansion chuck using basic engineering principles with lathe components. It uses 2 tapered end plugs, 8 tapered side slats, 2 automotive band clamps, 4 latex tubing rings, and a little duct tape. One end plug is […]

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A Segmented Wood Bracelet

Last summer, I turned some wood bracelets for my granddaughters. Afterwards, a viewer send in a question about how to turn the outside of the bracelet without flipping the workpiece over. With that in mind, I designed an expansion chuck on which to turn bracelets. With the chuck, I can now turn bracelets more easily. […]

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Woodturning A Round Train Whistle

Recently Steve Ramsey on his YouTube channel made a wooden train whistle out of square pine. Immediately, it occurred to me that a train whistle must be round. So I made this whistle out of poplar with walnut end caps. It is about six inches long with a diameter of about two inches. There are […]

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DIY LED Lights For Woodturning

A DIY project to provide LED light to my wood lathe. The LED’s were purchased from Ikea; The magnet was purchased from Harbor Freight. I woodturned small bases to hold the light and the magnet. Both were turned from scrap offcuts: one is russian olive, the other is aspen. Before turning, I drilled holes to […]

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A Field of Mushrooms (Part 2)

Woodturning a natural edge mushroom in apricot. In this video, I continue a series exploring what difference the turning axis could make on a mushroom turning. A viewer questioned how I oriented the turning axis, so here we go with an experiment. With this second apricot branch, I’m orienting the turning axis a few degrees […]

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A Field of Mushrooms (Part 1)

This woodturning project is a natural edge mushroom in apricot. A viewer questioned how I oriented the turning axis on the last video. Since I didn’t have a defined answer, I decided to do an experiment. With three apricot branches, I will orient the turning axis differently in each one: one straight thru the pith; one diagonally […]

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A Mushroom in Apricot

This woodturning project is a small natural edge mushroom in apricot. I saw Walt Weis at the Oregon State Fair making his version of mushrooms. The mushroom is 3″ tall, and a little over 2″ across the cap and finished with mineral oil and beeswax. The wood is green or wet apricot harvested about 9 […]

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