This was made from basically 3 cast iron assemblies from a 4 foot wood lathe. These assemblies were designed to maybe turn a baseball bat or banisters not a 12 foot long 4x4. First problem was getting it to turn slow enough to handle a 12 foot 4x4. The result was the mess of pullys you can see mounted on the brown board. The second big problem was flexing. You cannot turn something that long without it deflecting in the middle. It ends up looking like a bowling pin. I had to spend hours turning the mast grinding away with a giant wood rasp to get it straight. The third problem was time, it took me about 3 eight hour days to get the job done. I could have used a plane and ended up with a pretty octagonal mast in a little over 8 hours. Fourth problem, fear. The whole time I was turning this mess I was afraid it was going to come loose and bean me. That stress alone will keep me from ever trying this again.

Bottom line, if you want turned wooden masts pay someone else to do it. Someone who has the proper equipment.

Here are some images of the setup:

The device was easy to build and set up but I found the results to only so so. The radial arm saw is not as stiff as you might think it is for a close tolerance operation and the plywood should be kept in one place rather than feeding it for a better scarf. The sheets are too limp to hold their location, even with good downpressure, while feeding. Here is a photo of the reulting scarf on two stacked sheets. (Note the sheets are narrow as I only needed to scarf the sides and bottoms, rather than the full sheet widths.)

If I had it to do over, I would probably just hand plane it.

If you're me...

Please don't judge the splice, either. I made the fid so in the future they will be smoother. A bamboo skewer is not all in it.

When you decide to reject a bunch of potential coaming stock, do you throw it away?

I make a little plane to round over edges, particularly SOF stringers.

It's rough, yet. It needs to have the bed and blade interface tuned a bit, and a real wedge as this is just temporary to use as a template.

It do cut, though...

Peace,

Robert

these flaring tools have a range of hole sizes for different copper pipe

dimensions - so bang in your copper swage and screw up the vice

voila ze job is done !!!!

with luck

bill

[iurl]http://www.messing-about.com/forums/index.php?topic=6020.0[/iurl]

I saw plans for sale for a wooden framed greenhouse. It is shaped like a Bishop's hat and is used in the north east. I believe that the designer and seller lives in New Brunswick or Nova Scotia.

Has anyone seen this link or know the address?

Any help is always appreciated, Norm ;D

Thanks 

Thanks.

but found I could never get the blade mounted the same way twice.

I was all set to order a Veritas guide from Lee Valley:

http://www.leevalley.com/wood/page.aspx?c=2&p=51868&cat=1,43072,43078&ap=1

when it occured to me that one feature of the new one that my existing guide lacked was the ability to set the same distance (and thus angle) each time. So I went to work and built a jig to let me do this.

As near as I can tell, the "preferred" angle for planes is from 25 to 30 degrees. The 25 makes a finer cut but the edge doesn't last as long. And or the 30 can be used to "micro bevel" a 25 degree blade. So now it's just a simple matter of pulling off the blade, slipping it in the jig and about 10 or so passes on 3 grades of wet sand paper, and I'm back to very, very sharp. Since the same angle is repeated, it takes almost no time to sharpen the blades.

BTW, I'm now sporting an arsenal consisting of Stanley #4 and #5 bench planes, and 9 1/2 and 60 1/2 block planes. Absolutely amazing what really sharp blades in these tools can do.

Any other links out there?

James Krenov shows a simple way to make custom wood planes in his book,

For anyone interested in using a router to function as a lathe the following is most interesting.

http://bluemax44.home.pipeline.com/page7.html