Turning my own porch newel posts – blog post 2
Its been about a week since my 1st entry on this subject. I ordered a fluting guide from an online company as opposed to making my own. This post will serve as a review of the fluting guide. First thing to know is your lathe must have an indexing guide. I am using a Delta with a 24 space indexer. I chose to have 12 flutes in my post, that comes out to be every other position. 1,3,5,7 ect. I marked these with a sharpie so I could at a glance make sure I was in a correct position before I made the cut.
NOTE: Left Click on the Pics to enlarge. When finished click back arrow to go back to page. The Crabtree Woodworks logo will always take you back to home page
The fluting guide I purchased requires a small trim router to cut the flute. My son Matt gave me his Bosch Colt. It works great for this. Thanks Matt!!. The fluting guide assembly was straight forward. It fits well on my Lathe, Construction is clean and simple. Overall it does exactly what its supposed to do. I am using a standard .25 cove bit for this job.
The second picture above shows the first step before cutting a flute. Square the post in the Lathe to the first index point. Note the square against the post in the pic. The bit has to be at the same height as your lathes live center/tail stock. The flute guide has an adjustment to achieve this. See pic one. The aluminum bar on the front of the guide serves as a cutter depth and distance guide for router travel. Because of the direction your bit is rotating, flute cutting should start on the right moving left otherwise your bit will try to climb out of the flute as it is cutting. To cut a flute in a tapered post or curve, I suppose you could remove the aluminum guide and place a depth bearing stop on your bit shank.
I could have made this device myself. but for the price it was worth buying. If you are a woodworker reading this entry, you can purchase this fluting guide at: http://www.pennstateind.com/store/LIXGA.html.
So how did my flutes turn out? Here are some pics below. I have about 40 posts to make. That’s a lot of fluting.
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