Gayus Wood

Making a Coffee Scoop Small Diameter turnings the Walnut Bowl is done

Good Morning Everyone,

I got up early today and re-started the coffee scoop project. Heres how it went:

I decided to remake the wooden base for the pvc collet chuck. The original one was made out of pine and it didnt look nearly strong enough to withstand the shearing forces produced by a lathe. So I discarded it and remade it out of some red birch:


Since it was rather rough on the edges, I decided to round it down and promptly broke it:



Good grief. Since the rest of it was in one piece, I decided to use it temporarily as a holder while I worked on the pvc portion of the chuck.  I inserted the pipe into the slot on the birch base and placed another piece of wood on top of the pvc pipe and placed the whole thing between centers to mark and drill it:


The walls of the pipe will have slots cut into them and also a large hole-slot drilled and cut into it to allow the handle of the scoop to protrude while the piece is being turned. So I marked and drilled and cut  into the sides of the pipe with a drill and a hack saw:



And here is a photo of the completed chuck with the hose clamp in place:


With that done, I removed the broken base and re-made it out of a piece of solid maple. Here is a photo of the completed chuck:


I glued the pipe and the base together and they are drying in the shop.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, I turned our red oak scoop blank down more:


Hmmm...now it looks like a small lemon on a stick and the reason it does is that the x, y, z axis of the piece are not equal in length, or in other words, it isnt round yet. So back to the lathe we go for more turning, sanding and finally I cut it off:


...too soon. Its too large to fit into the pipe. So Im going to manually cut down the ends of the blank until it fits. Oh well, its a nice morning to work outside.

Now it fits, very tightly, but it fits:


When this is placed back on the lathe in a couple of hours, I will shave off the top of the scoop and then hollow it out. If all goes well, I should wind up with a scoop with the handle attached. The glue really needs to dry hard so Ive removed the blank and Ive set it aside. Ill go back to it later this afternoon.

In the meantime, I finished the first walnut bowl. Here it is:


And here is a side shot:


Its been polished and its ready for delivery. Ill have to plug the holes in the base where the screws for the faceplate were drilled but that will only take a minute. Im going to go and email the happy owner.

Ill be doing another posting later today so stay tuned.

VW