I did the table this morning. This afternoon started making a ship's wheel. The plans call for a 70mm diameter wheel which I can't find anywhere so no option than to make it myself. I know how they go together so I made a rough drawing to get an idea what size stock I needed to cut.
From the drawing I got the size and shape of a segment. I used this to make 12 No. rough, oversize segments.
By bisecting the 60 degree angle on a set square and drawing a normal line on the sanding station guide platform I made a jig to sand the ends of the segments to the correct angles. I don't often use a hand saw for accurate cuts, I prefer to use the sanding station and sand away little bit little bit and softly softly catchee monkee.
I cyo'd a copy of the plan onto some scrap 3mm ply,
then cyo'd the 4mm thick segments onto the plan. I then cyo'd the 1.5 mm thick segments to another copy of the plan.
When all gone off, I drilled the wheel center through both rings with a 1mm drill. Using the drill bit as a guide, I cyo'd the two rings together, wood to wood but with the joints rotated 30 degrees.
When dry I drilled a 1mm hole in a piece of scrap and again, using the bit as a guide, I pinned the wheel section to the scrap. Next I offered the wheel up to the sanding disc until cutting at the required radius then clamped the scrap and slowly rotated the wheel segments until a perfect circle.
I secured the resulting ring in the 4 jaw chuck on the lathe, centered it using the pointy center bit as a guide to the 1mm center hole.
Using the metal working tools and a fairly fast RPM I turned the inner section of the ring to size and made a small relief cut on the inner and outer edges of the 1.5 mm ring segments.
Removed the piece from the lathe, reversed the chuck jaws, and replaced the piece in the chuck and turned away the 3mm ply from the center rear leaving a thin ring as temporary support.
That's as far as I got today.
Plan to turn the spokes from 4MM stock tomorrow. Will turn the boss out of brass, cut away the 4mm ring in way of the spokes and cyo it all together. I have some miniature wood turning tools but no tool rest so intend clamping a piece of suitable steel in the tool holder as a toolrest. I will dig out all my New Yankee Workshop tapes and brush up on wood turning with Uncle Norm!!! This will be another "first" for me. Aside from the lathe and sanding station, these are the only tools I used. At this scale I can't be accurate or tidy enough by hand so always try and get a machine to get things as tiddly as possible.
