Anybody use Amy Grigg's Spike Plate?

[Bill Szydlo]

Just curious if anyone has tried this plate? It seems very well made and I'm interested if anyone has any thoughts about it's usefulness? Also, if you have tried it, I'm wondering how it would work for natural edge bowls?

Here's a link to the site.
https://www.amygrigg.com/spike-plate/spike-plate

Thanks in advance,
Bill

 

[Owen Lowe]

Just curious if anyone has tried this plate? It seems very well made and I'm interested if anyone has any thoughts about it's usefulness? Also, if you have tried it, I'm wondering how it would work for natural edge bowls?

Interesting and certainly looks well-made. I think it should work very well for folks who use more refined blanks with a flat face and a drilled center hole. In evaluating my own use of such a drive plate, I believe I'd feel restricted into establishing the center point prior to beginning the rough-out. I tend to modify the centering at both the tail stock and head stock as I do the roughing.

 

[Bill Boehme]

Never heard of it before and it seems terribly overpriced. I have made custom mold drives for special pieces such as Australian burls. I used epoxy putty and Saran Wrap. I suppose that Bondo could also be used. I would prefer this over a spike plate which could damage the surface of the burl.

 

[Dean Center]

We have two turners in our club who use them and have recently introduced us to the concept. One is sort of a production turner who uses the commercial product and finds it extremely useful as it's fast. The other turner is a hobbyist who uses a homemade version and likes it for platters and plates. Here's the homemade one:

 

[JeffSmith]

I too find myself adjusting centers more often than not. Got an elio drive (sp?) from Brian McEvoy several years ago and use it fairly often on oddly shaped blanks, particularly burl. Three small, sharp points are easily adjusted an leave minimal damage. Looks like it would serve a similar function without the center drill and with the ability to adjust centers when needed. I think Brian sold to another seller - don’t have the name on the tip of my tongue...

 

[Zach LaPerriere]

I've had the Spike Plate since the beginning of the year. It's a great product, amazingly well made, and I use it often.

I think the Spike Plate's main use is similar to a face plate, but without the time needed to drive fasteners. Unlike a face plate: tailstock support is mandatory with a Spike Plate.

Glenn Lucas sells and promotes the Spike Plate as a more efficient way to hold blanks. My understanding is that he used a similar plate unbeknownst to Amy Grigg. When she started selling them commercially someone remarked that Glenn also uses a similar homemade plate. She reached out to Glenn hoping she didn't step on his toes, and being a fine gentleman and seeing the use, Glenn jumped on selling the Spike Plate because he sees the value in it.

I'm not a production turner, though I turn mostly full-time. I rarely begin a bowl with a spur center. Most bowls I turn begin as blanks ripped on both top and bottom faces with a chainsaw. Prior to the Spike Plate I almost exclusively used either a face plate or a Oneway screwchuck: which is great, but screw chucks don't do well at holding softer spalted woods or big/heavy blanks. There are also times when I don't want a hole in the center of a piece. The Spike Plate is also arguably a tad faster to set up than a screw chuck.

Safety-wise: Yes, drilling a centering hole is a good practice, though I often don't for smaller to medium blanks. Note that this is against instructions, and you dang well better know for a fact that your tailstock is set solid. I like that the Spike Plate allows a person to move the side to side axis easily by just backing off the tailstock. This isn't an issue with most bowl blanks, but it can be really handy on some blanks where I'm trying to balance features of grain on either side of a rim.

I don't think the Spike Plate is intended for NE bowls in most cases because NE rims are curved, rather than flat. It would probably be unsafe, unless the natural edge was mostly flat. The spikes are meant to grab a good amount of wood. That said, I turn some bowls with live edge left by the chainsaw, and the Spike Plate is perfect for that.

I see the Spike Plate as a step up from the face plate (though not a complete replacement), and a tool for speeding up the initial holding of a blank. Production turners will love it, and those who appreciate all sorts of different ways to hold difficult wood will also love it.

The spikes are threaded for boot/shoe cleats, and even in softer woods barely leave an impression. I haven't purchased a cleat wrench (cheap from a sporting goods store), but you always could remove some cleats for smaller blanks or unique situations.

I can only imagine we'll see more Spike Plates in use in the coming future, and we'd probably already see more Spike Plates if Amy did shows or had a US distributor other than herself.

 

[Doug Freeman]

Here is a similar version, but the points are threaded bolts allowing adjustment to the wood form, and about 1/2 the price.

https://www.woodturnerstools.com/chuck-plate

 

[hockenbery]

I prefer a spur drive so I can align the grain easily. In both directions.
I don’t need the speed for production where saving seconds count.

This drive would not work well on a NE Bowl because they do require the alignment of the rim height and or the center circles in the bottom.

an alternative is the Al Stirt drive that allows the grain alignment in one direction.
If you line up the endgrain you get a grain pattern centered in the bottom.
This is a quick positive hold too. This same drive can be built on a faceplate.

http://www.alstirt.com/PDF files/NewBowlDriver1.pdf

if you are meticulous in cutting blanks the grain can be aligned pretty well with the saw and the drill.
However I find it so easy to eyeball the chainsaw cuts and do the fine adjustment in the lathe.

 

[William Rogers]

At Kanas City Glen Lucas was using a homemade spike plate that looked like the Al Stirt plate. I plan to make one at some point, but have yet to do so. The drive center I got with my Robust is like a dead center and I haven’t used it yet. Has anyone used the Robust drive center and does it work?

 

[hockenbery]

The drive center I got with my Robust is like a dead center and I haven’t used it yet. Has anyone used the Robust drive center and does it work?

I use a ONEWAY cup drive center for almost all my spindle turning. The point and cup are nearly identical to the Robust center. It will drive a small bowl. However on large bowls it will spin against the wood rather than drive the bowl. I use a spur drive for bowls.

For spindles the cup drive has numerous advantages:
- mounting is fast and accurate the point can be set in a pencil mark or in a hole made by a scratch awl,or center pinch.
- Work removed from the lathe centers perfectly when remounted.
- Work can be flipped end for end centers perfectly since the drive center cups match the live center cups
- For advanced indexing work you can set the index to 0 the loosen the tailstock slightly and spin the wood on the centers to line up the grain. - I do this on 2 and 3 sided turnings to choose the grain for one face of the turning.
- The cup drive is excellent for use on the three centers near the edge of a cylinder used when turning a 3 sided spindle.

I prefer the cup to steb centers. For spindles.

 

[David Shumaker]

Just curious if anyone has tried this plate? It seems very well made and I'm interested if anyone has any thoughts about it's usefulness? Also, if you have tried it, I'm wondering how it would work for natural edge bowls?

Here's a link to the site.
https://www.amygrigg.com/spike-plate/spike-plate

Thanks in advance,
Bill

I have not used it and agree with Bill that it seems extremely expensive. I have always mounted bowl blanks between centers which allows me to move a piece during turning. That being said, I tend to be frugal and have no need to add to my collection of rarely used tools. It seems we turners tend to waste lots of money on things we don't need and with limited usefulness.

 

[Mike Brazeau]

I have had a Oneway Big Bite since it came out and it has worked out just fine for me. Allows me to play with setup of the blank for best grain orientation.
https://oneway.ca/index.php?route=product/product&product_id=453

 

[RichColvin]

Here is a similar version, but the points are threaded bolts allowing adjustment to the wood form, and about 1/2 the price.

https://www.woodturnerstools.com/chuck-plate

I like their tail stock steady rest.

 

[Bill Boehme]

The drive center I got with my Robust is like a dead center and I haven’t used it yet. Has anyone used the Robust drive center and does it work?

I have both the Oneway Safe Driver and the Robust Cup Center with bowl drive attachment. They are both basically dead centers brought back to life as drive centers. The Robust cup center that I bought also included the large bowl attachment which threads onto the cup center. I use all of these drive centers. The bowl attachment for the Robust cup center was a clever idea (wish I had thought of it) and I find it to be very useful for providing more friction than the standard cup.

 

[Joe Kaufman]

Drill and tap a aluminum face plate for sharpened socket head cap screws. I use it on the inside of dried and warped bowls to true up the base for mounting on a chuck for final turning. Back off the cap screws and you can use the faceplate in the normal screw attachment mode.

 

[Dave Landers]

I also made a big drive center from a faceplate. I had a faceplate with a threaded center hole so it could be used as a screw chuck, so my drive center has a center point, which I find useful and important to keep things from sliding around.

https://dlwoodturning.com/monster-drive-center/

I can't find these faceplates anymore - you could get plates of various sizes that attached to a spindle adapter.

 

[Donovan Bailey]

I have had a Oneway Big Bite since it came out and it has worked out just fine for me. Allows me to play with setup of the blank for best grain orientation.
https://oneway.ca/index.php?route=product/product&product_id=453

I totally agree with Mike. I have a Big Bite too and I think that it does everything that this plate does...but faster. Whenever I even think of a NE option now I grab it...and it "holds" like you would not believe. Guys, it certainly warrants a closer look and it only costs somewhere around $20.

 

[R Henrickson]

For starting all sorts of bowls a Big Bite is great, both in performance and price.

 

[Doug Rasmussen]

" I have a Big Bite too and I think that it does everything that this plate does."

No, it doesn't... The Spike Plate orients the driven end of the blank perpendicular to the lathe axis. They're different tools for different purposes.

 

[Charlie Knighton]

Jerry Marcanter sent me this one....i mainly use it for my 4 piece "This Way" box series......tks again Jerry

 

[Gerald Lawrence]

I have the big bite and unless the wood is soft the bite is so large I have to cut a slot in the blank for it to hold. I do not try to drive it in for fear of splitting the blank.

 

[stu senator]

See the photo on page 42 in the current issue of the American Woodturner. This is a spike plate that has been in use for a very very long time. An old idea made new.
Stu

 

[Tom Albrecht]

At Kanas City Glen Lucas was using a homemade spike plate that looked like the Al Stirt plate. I plan to make one at some point, but have yet to do so. The drive center I got with my Robust is like a dead center and I haven’t used it yet. Has anyone used the Robust drive center and does it work?

I use it frequently. It works well, but it's not appropriate for large blanks.

I use the Oneway Big Bite (works great) or my homemade Al Stirt gizmo for large blanks that need adjusting.

I don't think the Amy tool is overpriced, maybe over-engineered, but it does sound like the folks that use it like it well.

 

[Zach LaPerriere]

A quick story about Amy Grigg's Spike Plate.

Recently my most important customer (my wife Jenn) asked me if I could make a wood plate for a photoshoot the next day. It was 11PM, time for bed, and the plate was due at 10AM the next morning.

Guess who wanted to sleep in and then have a second cup of coffee the next morning?

It wasn't me! I was getting ancy to make the plate, but had to at least make the second cup of coffee before heading down to the shop. I don't remember the exact time, but I had about an hour to make a nice wood plate, and I hadn't even started. The good news: I had a fine piece of doug fir, 5/4 about 12" wide.

I wanted to get the full 1 1/4" of wood for the plate to have a base and be able to pick the plate up easily. After cutting a circle from the piece of fir, the first tool I reached for was the Spike Plate.

I cut a tenon on the back of the plate, turned off the lathe, removed the Spike Plate, and put on a #2 Oneway dovetail chuck. The rim of the plate was so true that I didn't need to touch it with a tool. I sanded the rim beginning at 240...that's how true the plate was...I lost at most a few thousandths of wood. I didn't cut the base, as the original surface was true enough. I put a quick coat of mineral oil on the plate, and off it went to the photoshoot. The plate went into service still with tenon and the nubbin from the live center.

Moral of the story for me: tools get the job done, and when I want efficiency: I invest in tools that increase efficiency. For me: the Spike Plate saves me material, but mostly it save me time and expands the range of a few obscure things I make. I'm not a production turner, but I think like one (at least try to), because this is my livelihood. I'm in the minority here, and so the Spike Plate probably isn't worth the investment for most of you.

I'd also like to address the price of the Spike Plate. It's machined from 6061 Aluminum and is seriously stout. I don't know, but I think it's made in the US. It's a lifetime tool. Green blanks aren't going to rust the Spike Plate. The spikes are replaceable and removable. I felt that it was a bargain because the Spike Plate has paid for itself many times in its first year, and it ought to be around for decades.

EDIT: I'll post a picture of the plate in the gallery.

 

[Bill Szydlo]

Thank you all for taking the time to share your thoughts and impressions of the Spike Plate. I decided to purchase one while Amy was having a 10% off sale around Cyber Monday. The purchasing experience was excellent. I too was skeptical about the price for my initial perceived value but after receiving the Spike Plate I feel it was well worth the cost. As Zach stated it is very well made with high quality materials. I experimented with it using a bowl blank and a piece of 3/4" wood I had laying around. On both types of blanks it performed superbly. I was able to easily turn the outside of the 3/4" platter with no slippage. I should note that to turn thinner stock the center post of the Spike Plate is removable so no center hole is needed. Regarding the bowl, the blank held securely and was easy to put on and off. Overall I am very happy with the Spike Plate.