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Turning Long Thin Spindles

Robert Arnold

Robert Arnold

Joined
Oct 28, 2008
Messages
67
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190
Location
Bushwood, Maryland
Website
thedoghouseworkshop.com
I am looking for some recommendations on turning some long thin spindles. I have some Cocobolo that is about 5/16" to 3/8" square and 18" to 24" long. I want to mount these and turn then down to about 1/8" to 3/16". The finished diameter will be the same for the entire length. I am looking for different ideas about mounting these. I have to turn about 30 to 40 of them for my current project so I am looking for methods that are easily repeatable and will give me consistent results (barring operator error). I have a Oneway 1640 and I currently have a Vicmarc VM 100, VM 150 and a Oneway Stronghold chuck. I also have a Beall collet chuck. Any suggestions would be appreciated.

Thanks, Robert
The Dog House Workshop
 
I have done it two ways. The first was with the lathe but the spindles had to be small enough to fit through the headstock. I fed them through the headstock and held them in a chuck. I turned about 3" at a time and them moved them forward. I held the loose end in a string steady and then turned a new 3" section. I would have to go look and see how many I built but I think I had 3 string steady's in a row. These spindles were 1/4" in diameter and 12 to 14" long.
The other method is much easier and quicker. I used a router. It's hard to describe without photos and I still think I have the jig so I could probably post some maybe tomorrow. If you can imagine a large hole in a 2x4. This is placed over a straight router bit. Then there are 2 holes perpendicular to this. The larger one fits the square piece of wood that you've ripped on the table saw. It should fit fairly snug but allow the wood to rotate. The other hole lines up with this one exactly but is the finished diameter of the dowel you need.
So essentially you chuck up one end of the square dowel in your hand drill. Feed it into the square hole. As the wood rotates and is fed forward through the hole the router bit rounds it down. when it enters the second hole this stabilizes the wood so it cuts cleaner. With a little sneaking up on the router bit adjustment you can get dowels exactly the size you need and they are perfectly round.
don't know if either one of these is useful for your project.
 
Some fishing rod builders use a power wrapper and turn their cork grips on it. They have metal rails with sliding supports under the rod. At one end is a DC motor and a chuck. They turn at 100-200 rpm. There is also a rod dryer that is less expensive and turns at 6-30 rpm, way too slow for what you're contemplating. If you know a rod builder, you might borrow a power wrapper. If you don't, you might glean enough ideas from looking over a power wrapper to answer your question. (google or www.acidrod.com/equipment.html) It would boil down to making a chuck (a piece of PVC with rubber bands crossing at different angles is a traditional rod building chuck) and providing many supports (think 'steadies').

It seems a daunting prospect to me, but contributors to this forum have done much more challenging things. John Lucas' router strategy might be your best answer. Or see if there is a Mexican tooth pick maker who would set his cross cutter to 18" instead of 3. 🙂

Dean Center
 
Hi Robert,

I do the through the headstock thing. I take the point out of the live center and leave the tailstock end big enough so that it won't pass through the live center. There is no pressure on the live center. It is used to keep the end of the turning from wiping around.

The best I can do is 18" at 1/8". If I was going longer I would need at least one string steady and likely would use more than one string steady.

There is a learning curve to the process. The first time I tried this the best I could do was 8". I have made 50 or more long thin spindles and 12" to 14" is my more typical length.

If the raw stock is of a specific size you can make a collar to go one the shaft and with the outside of the collar to be round which you support with a spindle steady. This is used for the initial roughing so the stock will fit through the headstock.

There are doweling plates which have beveled holes of different diameters. You beat the stock through the hole (bevel side down). These work great if you are looking to make specific diameters with no turning features. The surface is a bit rough as are most dowels. You can always sand the dowel after driving them through the plate.

Good luck
 
If you look in Roy Underhill's books he may have a description of the spindle turning plane. I don't remember what it's called but it would be easy to build. It's somewhat like the old hand held pencil sharpeners but the plane blade is set for a certain size. I think Lee Valley sells a larger version.
 
Bill Boehme said:
It seems to me that either the rounder or the dowel plate would have a tendency to follow the grain of the wood unless used only for final sizing once rough turned slightly oversized.
Click to expand...

Note the reference to riving the stock or steaming. It'll straighten and give you the best result. Having used both implements in the past, I do not find that they "follow the grain", but they do pick up the ends of climbing grain, as any cutting tool will.

Of course, get too big an angle and the dowel is weak. But that's true with any method.
 
I second the dowel plate. When you are a turner, everything (round) looks like a turning project. I cannot imagine that mass produced dowels are turned (wasteful), so perhaps a quick Google of how dowels are made would be helpful?
 
Steven Antonucci said:
I second the dowel plate. When you are a turner, everything (round) looks like a turning project. I cannot imagine that mass produced dowels are turned (wasteful), so perhaps a quick Google of how dowels are made would be helpful?
Click to expand...

They use the mechanized version of the rounder at a place near us. White birch is split, spun through, then fed into another mechanical lathe that turns it into - golf tees! Neat operation.
 
May be an idea

I had to make a few thousands dowels of a very precise diameter for some dexterity test board. I purchased 36" dowels and used my machine lathe in the following manner:
Bored a metal plate with the exact diameter and mounted it on the tool holder perpendicular and exactly on the turning axis
Held the dowel in the three jaws chuck and started the lathe with a rate of feed toward the head stock of 0.005.
The result was very smooth dowels almost burnished and within 0.002.
Of course watching this thing became boring so I set up a jig that would shut off the lathe when it reached the headstock.
In your case being so small you might want to feed the stock a few inches at a time through the head stock and have a receiving tube on the other side of the die so the thing does not wip around.
Look into used machine lathes
 
All, I should have been a little more specific in my original question. The spindles that I need to make are tapered over the complete length and in some cases the ends are very thin but the middle of the spindle along the length is wider. Unfortunately the dowel plates and other devices typically will not work since they are used to make dowels of a consistent diameter. This is why I am looking for ways some other people may have accomplished this task. I have come up with a couple of ideas but I wanted to see what other methods some of you may have used.

Thanks, Robert
The Dog House Workshop
 
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