So there must be some woodturners around here. Show us what you got... also we can discuss about techniques. For example cups. How do you make them and with what tools. Are you thinking of making one ?
Yes! I want to get a lathe to mess around with for sure. Looks really fun for sure. Do you have any beginner recommendations? I was eyeing the harbor freight mid level one
Well first of all lathe isnt the only thing youll need. Pillar drill some cutting stones, burs and smarts. The best way to understand something is to try to make it. So maybe the best thing for you to do is to start and when you sruggle with a certain problem i can help (maybe) Other thing is that all those tools are pretty expensive.. so of you want to just try and make one and fail maybe its not a smart move. Of course you can always sell tools. Any lathe is good. Just dont get too weak.
I used a reeally crappy MasterCraft lathe to make a lot of kendamas (actually, I had two of them. The one good thing about mastercrap is they have epic warranty with like zero Q's asked lol), so if you're just starting into it, don't think that you need a $500+ lathe to make a decent kendama. The mastercraft lathes were like $190 CAD, and came with 3 REALLY crappy chisels. But hey, it worked. After that I bought a Delta 46-455, and it is great for my needs. I like it enough that I recently bought a 46-460 too! Though, it seems like Delta has been bought up by other companies once or twice lately, so it seems like getting any sort of parts or warranty isn't easy, I'm not sure they event make the 46-4xx lathes anymore? I had to seriously hunt around to get a replacement switch for the 46-460 (UPS smashed it when they delivered ), and then I couldn't find electrical schematics anywhere online, so I had to draw my own up before unwiring it. I searched pretty hard and found one site that had an image, but it was low enough res to not even be useful! wtf Like @Vlats said, a lathe isn't the only tool you'll need. Chisels for the lathe, some sort of sharpening setup, a drill press, a saw or two (hand saw, circ saw, table saw, those would be most useful), a hammer (to set the drive centre into the blank). A dremel can be handy, but not entirely necessary. I guess you COULD get by without a drill press, just using a hand drill instead, but you'll probably drill a sarado hole at an angle at some point and be pissed cause you just ruined an hour or two worth of work. Drill press is what you want. The most valuable advice you'll receive, and will probably ignore off the start: having a good sharpening setup and learning to use it properly is probably more important than anything else, and probably the hardest thing to do well. The actual turning will take some time to learn too, but trust me: if you can get your tools sharp enough to easily shave the hair off your forearm, the lathework that comes after will be WAY easier and more fun to do. @Vlats I actually don't really know what some of the other tools you mentioned are though! Different names in different languages I guess. A 'pillar drill' is usually called a 'drill press', at least in N America. Edit: I'm trying to figure it out... a cutting stone is like a sharpening stone for your tools? A burr is pretty straightforward (just google image search it). What is a smart though?
@Steezdiaz is this the lathe you were looking at? It looks pretty decent for $220 USD. I can see some things I wouldn't like about it, but for the price it seems pretty legit. The one I started with was closer to this one... honestly it looks almost identical, just some of the components are a tiny bit different, but I think a lot of the parts were probably sourced from the same manufacturer as the mastercraft one I had, they look almost identical. Fun fact: I gave the old Terra mastercraft lathe to the owner of CLYW, so he could use it to polish up the first run of yeti yoyos. Before that he was using a drill to spin them, and he had to polish a LOT of pieces, so he was getting gnarly muscle problems in his hands from holding a drill weird all day lol. He was pretty stoked on getting a lathe to help with the job.
@Steezdiaz right on. A good sharpening set up is worth investing in, a benchtop grinder with a good stone on it is a good place to start
And don't forget your PPE, unless your favorite color is blood red (btw, the tool Vlatko is talking about is the drill press)
@Angelo Saček truth! Eye protection, and a good respirator mask are key. Don't be dumb and think "I'll only wear a mask while sanding" or something like that. Lung disease is no joke. No loose clothes, jewelry, or long hair! Especially rings or bracelets, unless you want to deglove a finger
Stay safe! Whenever we exchange shop horror stories, it's usually someone making a bad call. They thought they could get by with something "this one time" or "one more time." They just wanted to do this thing really quick. They thought they could skip a step or use a tool a slightly dangerous way. If you're tired, take a break. Keep your eyes, lungs, digits and limbs longer (all body bits really). Started on an old '68 craftsman wood lathe via craigslist back in 2010 for $80, re-gifted it, and currently run a 10" x 15" mini. Did these tama 2 weeks ago out of hard maple/mahogany/walnut/birch... ... and butchered that bubinga ken they're perched on for a fran-ken-dama material/process hybrid project I hope to finish by next week. Happy shop days in 2017!!!
@DPatten I was wondering - The ring on the top of the tama, string hole side, is it a consequence of turning or 'by design'? When @Vlats and I turn tamas we get the ring unintentionally due to the rig we use to shape the sphere. Sometimes we can't even get rid of it by sanding without losing the roundness of the tama. I noticed the same ring on my kenco natty striped zens.
If you look closer it looks like its intentional... looks like totaly diferent type of wood. we get that ring from slightly burning the wood
@Vlats is right that the photo tama have a mahogany ring up by the string hole. Wanted thin walnut but you work with what you can get. Anyway, sanding burns and small tooling tear out can cause discolor on your finishes. For tama, I find I t's best to round using a jaw chuck and tenon setup. That way you only have one focus spot for parting and finishing, which could simply be the bevel drill point to make life easier. I then take the beveled tama and fit it to a tenon for the bevel-side ana diameter (still on the lathe) to drill the string hole on center. This way you can only get a burn ring by being too aggressive with your sanding. And that's just a matter of using fresh unclogged paper. Dust builds up very quickly in finer grits, so clean/change paper frequently enough to avoid sanding defects. If you want super slick smooth you can go into wet sanding world. Not ideal for play, but sure looks and feels amazing.
@DPatten thanks for good advice and telling how you do it. what glue do you use ? Are they durable enough ? I like how this thread is developing
Worth mentioning... I ruined a very beautiful kendama by wet sanding once, it was quite strange! Normally after tooling I sand 220-320, and then call it quits due to playability issues (like you mentioned). However some wood species look best super polished up, usually super dense exotics like Ebony or rosewood fall into this category. Anyways, I had some REALLY nice koa wood, incredibly curly stuff. I finished a ken and decided to sand to 600 or 1000 (can't remember where I stopped), so that the curl would really pop. Oddly, the ken had a very 'dusty' look once I finished, as it seemed the water had pulled the fine sanding dust into the woodpores, and it remained trapped there. NOTHING I tried would fix the problem, it sucked (and believe me, I tried! The rest of the koa kens sold for high prices at KWC, so one less was a good chunk of income, gone)! I'll attach a photo: Note: don't be afraid to wetsand! Usually it works great. Just thought this story might be of interest
PS here are some more photos of my work: Mum Ebony (kwc 2015 release) JKA certified white ash and purpleheart (JKA 2015 release) Koa with maple pinstripes Mun Ebony and maple burl