I need advice please...

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Marc Phillips

Member
Joined
Jun 1, 2004
Messages
900
Location
Columbus, GA, USA.
I know this will sound like a very silly question to most... but it is bugging me, and I am concerned for my safety on this one...

I spent the morning going through my tools one at a time sharpening them, then trying them on an acrylic blank I have chucked up... then changing the angle of the grind a little, trying it again, etc... raising and lowering the tool rest... you get the picture... all in the hopes of finding the method of turning an acrylic blank a little faster... I know, go slow, be safe... but if I am only taking off 0.000001 per pass I am gonna be there a long time... :D so I want to take off whatever I can safely remove with each pass... to speed up the process...

Sorry.... here's the deal..

I went to sharpen an old spindle gouge... one of those ones from Grizzly... a 1" ... first I reshaped it a little... the nose was too pointed.. then I set up the Wolverine to sharpen the gouge and it really felt unsafe...

.... like the downward force of the wheel was going to make the edge catch and the wheel would blow up on me... I checked that the tip of the gouge was well above center on the 8" wheel.. and it was... when I spin the wheel by hand the tip of the gouge catches hard and stops the wheel... but when the wheel is spun up to speed, the gouge does slide on the wheel but it is making me real nervous...

Does this make sense?

I could sure use some advice on this...
 
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Go higher on the wheel by changing the distance with the wolverine, probably just need to move it forward a tad. I don't know about the .000001 measurement but it doesn't take me any more time to turn an acrylic. You don't want to take too much off each pass, but I don't do that with wood either. Try approaching the acrylic from a different angle.
 
Marc

I know you want to speed up on turning acrylic. All of my pens are acrylics. I find the best angle is the one provided by the factory. It is true you need to go slow but that is the nature of the acrylic. To fast build up too much heat and blisters the acrylic. Some are more forgiving then others. If you use PR then you will have deep chip outs. It takes me no longer to turn acrylics then wood. Besides the faster you go the longer it will take to clean up the acrylics and in the long run you will not be saving any time. Make sure you skew is scary sharp.

Alan
 
Quick solution to knocking a blank down to size: use your parting tool. I have a 1/4" parting tool and I can rough shape a blank in 2 minutes or less. Start on one edge push in until near final dimension. Pull out, move over 3/16" and push in again. Very fast, very safe.

GK
 
Thanks folks....

I reground the spindle gouge by hand so that it was close to what I wanted... then put it back on the Wolverine and it worked like a champ.

I also received my Tormek jig and have reground my skew... seems awfully sharp now.... took forever, but came out real pretty....

.... now I am going to go try another acrylic with both the parting tool, newly sharpened skew, and newly sharpened spindle gouge...

We'll see!

Thanks .... I really appreciate the input...
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Marc,
Practice and learn to use the skew on the acrylics... it'll cut faster and smoother than any other tool.... I sometimes take the corners off with a round nose scraper but after watching Ed4copies do acrylics with a skew, I find it much easier and I get a better results.
 
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