As reservations pick up with the lathes I made a few changes to the area. The drawers have knobs and labels as to what is in each drawer and the grinder is now mounted to the end of the main cabinet. The small lathe is earmarked for a buffing station and is accessible on the other side of the cabinet. To help work flow in the area I moved the bed extension to the middle lathe giving us more room by the cabinet. The Artisan bench is now by the window of the soon to be Metal Shop Annex. We have a smaller and taller table in place and I will add a lower shelf for more storage.
If anyone has suggestions on how to make this area better through further adjustments let me know. The one drawer and door will have knobs as soon as hardware arrives. Also let me know if you have any needs for extra fixturing or tools that we might need. Today I added a set of 4" (100mm) jaws to our inventory.
This looks really great David. It will be really good not to have the conflict with the artisan bench. One thing I’d like to see from time to time is having a blade installed on one of the bandsaws that is better for cutting out blanks. The fine tooth blades are not great for that, and running a bunch of really hard woods through them will dull the fine toothed blades quickly.
That is really good feedback and with the new bandsaws we have a variety of blades available. In the top drawer is a circle plate to help locate the desired diameter / center location of a blank. We also have a small miter box for cutting small blanks for pens or handles.
If I was cutting a bowl blank of moderate size a 1/4" to 1/2" width blade to rough out a circle. Usually you do not want a fine pitch as this is going on the lathe.
I’d agree with David here. Something in the 3-5 TPI range that will run true and clear a lot of material. Once you get into deep bowl territory - 4 inches or deeper, fewer TPI and a a thicker blade is particularly important. Thanks!
If we limit the blade to the saw that will typically install a 3/8 on, change over should be fairly straight forward. We’ll want to make sure that folks know how to switch the blade, and that it gets switched back.
How close is an octagon to a bowl blank? I suspect the resaw would be the best choice if the blank is sufficiently tall. (long? of large dimension parallel to the axis of rotation)
When prepping bowl blanks it is usually round-ish rather than a near perfect circle. You can start with a square blank on the lathe but that is a bit more work.
