As I mentioned in my first entry for the Spring Pole Lathe, I will be making regular updates on my progress for this project.  We had company this weekend and I had the pleasure to share some shop time with my new friend who’s name is also Aaron.  We had a blast and I hope he had as much fun as I did.  After our guests continued on their vacation, I decided to go to my favorite lumber store, Capital City Lumber, and purchase the southern yellow pine, or “SYP,” for this project.  Much to my dismay, they do not carry dimensional SYP.  I could not believe it, then I remembered I bought some SYP at my local Home Depot for our raised bed garden last year.  Armed with this information I headed straight for the nearest Home Depot.

If you have never purchased or worked with SYP, then let me tell you, it is heavy stuff!  I remember the 2x10x12s I bought last year were really heavy.  This time I was buying 2x12x12s and they are almost too heavy for me.  I had a lot of difficulty choosing boards because they were so heavy and the selection was less than desirable.  I settled on two boards and used the cut list I had prepared to have them cut the boards to a more manageable size.  I loaded up the boards and headed home.

Once home, I had some additional cutting to do on the table saw.  I know, I know what you are saying:  “You used a power tool?”  But 24+ feet of ripping 2x stock is not what I consider fun.  Please remember even the olde timers had access to sawmills and were able to buy pre-dressed stock.  This is just a modern sawmill.

After I had rough cut all my stock to length and width, I created a lettered parts list and a cut diagram from the drawings.  Next it was time to surface plane.  When I said that this lumber was less than desirable I mean, among other things this lumber was dirty.  I do not have a thickness planer so I hand-surfaced the stock with a non-valuable junk plane so as to protect the sharp blades of my good planes.  As you can imagine, we are taking about 10s of linear feet here so this will take me a while to finish.  This is just as well as this stock is a little wet.  Once planed, the stock looks really nice, see the before and after pics below.

Clean on the left and needs work on the right

One other thing, I purchased two “Gramercy Hold Fasts” from “Tools For Working Wood” on Friday and they were delivered on Monday.  A hold fast is a clamping device used on a bench in predrilled holes and is very convenient for holding stock while chieseling, sawing, and chopping mortises to name a few.  I added small pieces of leather to the flat ends to help keep from marring my work pieces.  Here is a picture of the hold fast in and out of the bench hole.

One interesting factoid about these is they work better in thicker benches (The manufacturer suggests a minimum of 2″) and not so much in thinner benches.  My bench is very thin, it is 3/4″ and only have one hole bored that is about 5″ deep.  I had figured that the 5″ inch hole would work best and the thinner ones would be useless.  As it turned out the thinner ones work best.  I think the 5″ hole may actually be too deep.  I do not want to use them too much on the thinner holes as the hold fasts will probably damage them.  I will add a piece of leftover oak flooring to the back of my bench to give the holes more thickness, making them stronger and less likely to be damaged.

When I complete the workbench class this spring, I will finally have a bench made for traditional woodworking and the hold fasts will have a nice place to play.

Stay tuned for more, later, on the SYP and spring pole lathe.

-Aaron

You know the saying:  “Every journey begins with the first step,” well this is true for my woodworking projects as well.  Last month I attended the MWTCA tool meet in Hillsborough, NC and I purchased a old loom shuttle for $5.00.  If you are not familiar with loom shuttles, they are used to pass the horizontal thread through the vertical threads and they have steel cone shaped points in each end.  It is these points that I am interested in as centers for my upcoming project – a Spring Pole Lathe.  These points make excellent dead centers as they are perfectly round and smooth.  I did not mind destroying this particular shuttle because it was made out of some sort a laminate and was not very old.  I would have had a much harder time bringing my self to destroy a wooden antique, even for a good purpose.  One other plus, I was able to re-purpose the spool in the shuttle as a leather burnisher.  It works great for this task.

What is a “Spring Pole Lathe” you might ask.  A lathe is a machine used to turn round objects like spools, spindles, bowls and tool handles.  A Spring Pole Lathe is a more traditional type of lathe that has been around for 1000’s of years.  This is a reciprocal, driven by a cord wrapped around the piece being turned, and only cuts on the down-stroke of the foot treadle.  There is more information at the end of this article about this amazing tool.

Back to the shuttle points.  Well, saying that they were smooth is stretching it a little; they had a very light coat of rust.  Fortunately, they have a nice 3/8″ shaft and mount in a drill chuck perfectly.  A few minutes with course to finer sandpaper and they will have a nice smooth finish.  I hope to provide each step in the lathe building process in as much detail as possible to show how this is built.

I will be using Roy Underhill’s plans for a breakdown model for easier transport.  I have been planning to build this for some time and I have just finished a lengthy house project and I have promised myself that the lathe is my next major woodworking project.  I know Roy is tired of me asking tons of questions about the design.  I just want to have a usable tool that I will get many years usage out of.

Here is the online information and some pictures of the lathe.  The Woodwright’s School has a class on making the lathe Making the German Spring Pole Lathe with Roy Underhill.   I have enough experience now that I should be able to make this myself without the class.

Here is a link to the Wood Turners of Virginia’s web site. This is the plan I will be using to make my lathe.

Here is a link to a Lee-Valley article about spring pole lathes and some of their history: http://www.leevalley.com/us/newsletters/Woodworking/5/5/article2.htm

The Woodwright’s Shop featured the spring pole on a couple of episodes, but the one I am making was shown on Season 24 episode 5.  Unfortunately that episode is not currently available online.

The picture on the left is Roy, who was helping my daughter, Malena, with her turning.  This was taken in Jan. 2012 during the Lie-Neilson tool event at the NCSU Crafts center. The picture on the right is my son, Will, and Roy being Roy at the Jan. 2013 Lie-Neilson tool event at the NCSU Crafts center.  Kids change but Roy stays the same.

The wood that I plan on using is strong, hard, cheap and plentiful SYP, or Southern Yellow Pine.  This stuff is heavy and strong.  It is a good choice for this lathe, and it available most anywhere in my area.  I will be getting my supply from Capital City Lumber, local in Raleigh.

I cannot wait to get started and I hope you will join me in this fun, and useful project.

-Aaron

“Keep those Olde Tools sharp”

I hope you had a nice Holiday!  I sure did.  I got a chance to spend some quality time in the shop the last few days.  This English Layout Square is a project I have been meaning to take on for some time, but just never got around to it.  After seeing the re-run of the Woodwright’s Shop online where Roy and Chris built this, I had to make one too; it looked like too much fun to pass up.

I stopped by Home Depot for some errands and decided to get a 1/2″ piece of poplar to do this English Layout Square.  I knew it would not take long to build and would be a fun project.

This project was also published in the December 2010 issue of Popular Woodworking, and there is a free Sketchup drawing available as well.  That is what I used as a reference and I was able print out the nice curves, and transferred them to templates which I made out of some scrap maple.

It took me two days to complete the square and another day to tune and apply the finish (boiled linseed oil and paste wax topcoat).  I also took the time, while the linseed oil was drying, to make the holder out of some cherry and scrap poplar; it really accents the square and keeps it secure on the wall.

This may look like an easy project, but it did challenge my budding skills.  First, I had to make some pretty accurate cuts on the half lap joints.  Then, clean them up with the router plane…I love the router plane; it makes flattening cheeks on a half lap possible.  I also got to use my shoulder plane to true the shoulders and really make a clean joint.  I also had to cut out the areas between the horizontal stretcher with a saw and chisel – this is harder than it seems.  The final challenge was the half laps on the legs.  You cannot just saw these out.   I used a saw to cut 3/4 of the way and used a chisel to remove the bulk of the waste and then switched to the router plane once again to flatten it out.

After all that cutting and fitting, my joints were flat and tight.  I am really pleased with this square and hope to get many years of use out of it.

Here is a picture of the square out of the holder.

I spent s little more of my Holiday thinking about future projects.  For a Christmas present to myself, I bought John Alexander’s “Make a chair from a Tree” DVD video how-to, and I also bought a used copy of the book which is out of print  (real pricey) second edition book by the same title, originally published in 1994.  I am inspired to make some chairs from newly dead trees and start a whole new aspect of my woodworking journey.

Here is another book I own that was also authored by Alexander, as well as Peter Follansbee, titled “Make a Joint Stool from a Tree.”  For the project in this book,  I will need to complete my lathe first in order to make the legs…but it is on my to-do list.

-Aaron