Necessity is the mother of invention

[Ziffy]

I recently thought I would give bottle stoppers a 'turn', and use up some of the burl scraps I have. I began by boring a 3/8ths hole in the blank and gluing in a short length of dowel. Unfortunately, the dowel 'squished' and splintered in my drill chuck leaving me very frustrated. I figured there had to be a better way, and began searching through the shop for something else to use. I came across a piece of threaded electrical tubing. If you have ever installed a light fixture you should know what this is. The tubing (available in any hardware store) 'screwed' ever so easily into the 3/8ths hole (I redrilled), yet held firmly enough to not slip off. This worked great! I thought to take it one step further, and filled the tubing with solder. Now I have a nice solid 3/8ths mandrel that chucks right into my drill chuck in the headstock. I just drill the hole in the blank, thread it on to the mandrel, pull up the tailstock and go to town. It even holds strong enough so I can pull the tailstock away and finish the top of the stopper. Then all I have to do is insert and glue the dowel and the cork all in one step!

Brian

 

[john lucas]

Brian Good idea. Lamp rod is a force fit in a 3/8" hole. I make lamps and I drill a hole in the top, put epoxy on the threads and then "screw" it in the 3/8" hole. It holds very well like this.

 

[dkulze]

That's actually what I use my woodworm for. I have it glued into a turned piece of scrap wood and just mount it up in the chuck.

The other really easy way to do this is a pin chuck. Just make a jig with a piece of 3/8 bar stock sticking out of it. Flatten one side slightly and drop a little cut off section of a nail onto the flat spot. Insert into blank, turn slightly to roll the pin and lock it, and turn away.

Dietrich

 

[Frank Kobilsek]

I love to turn stoppers

Brian,
I make alot of bottle stoppers, both cork and chrome bodied versions. Probably approaching 200 already this year. They are my most sale-able product, great gifts and I enjoy going out to the shop on nights when I only have an hour and making 4 or 5 stoppers quick to decompress from real life.

Dowels - Hardware store dowels are made of ramen a very soft wood and should not be used for stoppers. I used to buy fluted hardwood dowels from the woodturning catalogs but last summer I bought a box of 2500 (3/8 x 2 1/2) for $40 from a distributor. That should last me a couple years and the per piece price is about 15% of the packages of ten availble in the catalogs.

Corks - Nick Cook sells corks on his website. He has the best price anywhere and the corks he sells fit the bottle. Corks I bought from other woodturning catalogs are too big and too much cork shows when the stopper is inserted in the bottle taking away from the beautiful turned wood of the stopper. Nick's corks are slightly lesser quality; not as white or dense, but they fit so I think they make for a much better end product.

I cut every bowl corner and piece of scrap in my shop to 1 5/8 square by 2 1/4 long, sometimes a little bigger. I drill then and peg the blocks and usually have 150 or more stoppers ready to turn in a box under the workbench. I hold the peg in a dowel chuck to turn.

Careful or stoppers will become your favorite thing to turn.

Frank Kobilsek

 

[John Taylor]

Try a 3/8 pin chuck or bottle stopper thread chuck

I got tored of breaking the dowels too. I switched to a metal pin chuck and just give the finished peice a twist in the opposite direstion to unloct it from the chuck. Have a few extrs pins handy or keep one of those magnetic sweepers handy they are invaluable. I wish I had invented them.

For the crome stoppers I use the threaded bottle stopper chuck which leaves a threaded hole about the diameter for the metal shaft to screw into. The threading gives more contact surface for the epoxy or CA.

John Taylor

 

[underdog]

Slightly smaller bolt (5/16) with the head cut off and placed in a drill chuck works pretty well too. (From other threads on this forum I see it might be wise to have a draw bolt in such chucks to keep them from coming out of the headstock.)

Then all one has to do is drill the hole slightly undersized, thread it on and turn. Once you have it finished to your satisfaction, drill it for the 3/8 dowel and glue one in.