Ornament Turning Question

[GregMuller]

I know there are a few ornament turners so hopefully someone can answer this. I want to turn one of the Birdhouse Ornaments that CSUSA. My question is what type of chuck do you use to turn the ornament. Thanks.

 

[Mattmck]

There is an excellent article on these little guys in a Popular Woodworking mag from last year. Photo tutorial from the master, Dick Sing. Shows how to do it, dimensions for jam chucks, etc. Great article. Those little guys are a lot of work, but make great gifts. I can't make them fast enough to make any $$ at craft shows yet, but the gift power is priceless.

 

[dubdrvrkev]

I just use my SN2 with the #2 jaws. You just have to leave the finial until the end. My birdhouses don't use much finial so its pretty easy that way. You can use whats left of your stock and turn a friction chuck to turn the ornament around and work on the finial or you can use pin jaws on your scroll chuck and expand into the opening. I normally do this since most of the time I don't have enough blank left to make a chuck.

 

[turned_for_good]

I just too cheap to use anything fancy. I make my birdhouse ornaments with a simple screw chuck. The ones I make are from two types of wood, one for the roof and one for the rest of the body. Drill a hole in the wood for roof and body for the screw chuck, turn, glue a short dowel in the hole of the body and then put gle in the hole in the roof and insert the dowl with the body. This is one of my first ones turned from scrap wood around the garage.
http://tinyurl.com/c8sst
Kind of rough but I liked it. Cherry for the roof and Sycamore for the body (I think).

Benjamin T.
Herrin, Illinois
http://tinyurl.com/dy8vy

 

[KenV]

I have a PDF file downloaded from CSU a while back for a bird house ornament -- can e-mail it as it is only 64K