Perfection???

[John Terefenko]

Have a question. I am looking for a sure fire way to make perfect round blanks. I only have a wood lathe so keep this in mind. Looking to chuck up some 2" stock about 8" long (max) I would like to wind up with a perfect round dowel of various sizes. I have round blanks down using the tool rest and skew and finger guiding and the checking with calipers and so forth but I find this time consuming and not always dead accurate.

Does anyone have a method or jig design with cutter to do something like this??? If so do you have photos?? Thanks.

 

[Bill Boehme]

You need to have some reasonable tolerance based on the purpose for which the cylinders will be used. Perfect means just that -- zero tolerance. It can't be done with any machine on any material, much less turning wood with hand tools. Get the wood as close as you can and use sandpaper to take out the remaining ripples that you can feel. Wood never stops moving so absolute perfection is just an elusive goal.

 

[Ian Thorn]

Hi John google home made dowel cutter it may help I just checked it.

Cheers Ian

 

[Freddie]

For your purpose you can do it two ways, both include building a jig for your lathe one to hold a router on a sled and use a fence to run it down your piece while it spins.
The other requires very slow rotation and a hand plane.

 

[Edward Weber]

I don't know how involved you want to get, but any lathe duplicator will do what you need.