Woodworking With Metalworking Machinery

[randyc]

I posted a thread about making gifts a while back using our metalworking machines.

http://www.hobby-machinist.com/threads/using-your-metalworking-machinery-to-make-unique-gifts.32303/

Although I mentioned this, I don’t know if I stressed this point enough so I’m going to mention it again:

Sometimes your “significant other” might object to the gradual accumulation of machinery in the garage (and the expense that it entails).I assure you that most of her objections will disappear if you make a few gifts for her mother, LOL.

I wanted to make a small stand for a pretty vase that my wife (who is now deceased) obtained in Mexico. She loved sunflowers and my intention was to put a candle inside the vase so that the sunflower would glow when viewed in dim lighting.

This is the vase. The photo was taken during daylight hours so it’s difficult to see the candle flame. The little stand is really the point anyway and more specifically the legs of the stand.





I thought that it would be a real PITA to jigsaw each of the legs individually, carefully sand them to finish dimensions and then radius all of the edges with a router. Why not use my vertical mill to machine a length of wood stock to the correct contours and then simply saw out individual legs ? Something like this:



So that’s exactly what I did. I didn’t photograph the milling operations (they occurred a few years ago) but they followed the above illustration almost exactly. This is a blank that I made for a different purpose but you can see that the finish contours of the legs are done except for slicing off the individual legs and routing the edges.





At another time, I made several stands to hold potted plants – the legs were made using the same process as the legs for the vase stand. (BTW note the removable ceramic tile at the bottom of the stand to collect any water dripping from the potted plant.)

The hardwood keys that join the top segments were made by corner-rounding a length of stock in the vertical mill and then sawing the individual segments to the desired thickness. Just like the legs, actually.

The slots in the white oak top segments were also produced in the mill using a fixture specifically designed for the semi-octagonal shape.



After slicing off four legs to the desired thickness, I used a corner-rounding cutter in this small, portable router table to round the edges. The router table was made with the help of the vertical mill with various cutters and a boring head.





This handy router table was described in detail in the following thread:

http://www.hobby-machinist.com/threads/small-extremely-portable-router-table.32386/

After some finishing touches on the legs (like adding the little walnut caps) and a little sanding, the legs were glued to the base of the stand:





A coat of shellac to seal followed by a coat of polyurethane and the little stand was done. My father-in-law (who is a very fine woodworker) made an interesting comment when he saw the finished project.

He noted that it is much more difficult to do good joinery in small projects than it is in normal-sized projects and he wondered why I would spend so much time on such a tiny project …

 

[Franko]

Great thread, Randy. I've turned wood on my machinist lathe a few times and was astonished at how good the finish was just using carbide inserts. I've used the mill to cut slots and elongated holes in wood, too. For that, I usually chuck a router bit.

 

[RJSakowski]

Some nice woodwork, Randy! Well presented, as usual.

 

[randyc]

Great thread, Randy. I've turned wood on my machinist lathe a few times and was astonished at how good the finish was just using carbide inserts. I've used the mill to cut slots and elongated holes in wood, too. For that, I usually chuck a router bit.

Hi Frank,

I also use the lathe for wood turning although I've never tried carbide. I have a HSS tool with fairly generous rake and radius that is used only for wood. I especially like using a metal lathe on wood because of the power feed. As you noted, some surprisingly good finishes can be obtained.



I've not had good luck with straight-flute router cutters in the vertical mill, they seem to produce a lot of pounding. I use contour-cutting router tools often with good results when a very slow feed is used. For straight cutting, 2-flute spiral end mills give pretty good results for me although I keep meaning to try a spiral-fluted pattern router cutter - that should work a lot better than straight flutes I think.

Here are some votive candle holders - combined wood and metal - everything turned on the lathe using a cutter like the one shown above. The materials are Western Ash, aluminum and brass.

It's hard to see but the shank of the candlesticks is hexagonal - produced on the vertical mill with a 3-jaw chuck on a rotary table mounted horizontally; the free end was supported by the mill vise.

 

[randyc]

I forgot about this little stand for a globe - the legs are made exactly as described in the first post.

 

[Franko]

Beautiful, Randy.