I'm Brad Rodriguez and today I'm going to show you some beginner mistakes I
made on the lathe while turning this bottle opener out of black palm and let
me just tell you black palm is a major painting this is day three of my six
days of beginner woodturning video series I'm launching a new video each
day of a turning project any beginner can make this is my first time making
most of these projects so you'll see some mistakes I made and things that I
learned I'll have a link in the description of the playlist for all six
videos so you can check out the whole series now let's get turning today I'm
working with a very different wood called black palm it's neither a
hardwood or softwood but a monocot like a grass or bamboo I read that on what
database the plank is also a bit smaller than the other ones I've been using this
is one and a half by one and a half versus the 2x2 inch blanks that I was
using in earlier days and this also was a challenge since the stock insert jaws
on my chuck only go down to one and three-quarters of an inch so I had to
mount the piece by clamping the diagonal corners in the Chuck versus turning the
piece down to a cylinder like I did in day one and day two now a better option
would have been to change out my jaw insert to a smaller one I plan on
picking one of those up in the future I just didn't have one the hardware for
the bottle opener is similar to the ice-cream scoop from day two just a long
three eighths of an inch threaded shaft so I chucked up a bit in the tailstock
and drilled out a hole for tapping the mandrel that I'll be using once again oh
and this is me faking that I'm drilling because I didn't hit record when I
really did it seriously this project was just doomed from the get-go I removed
the MIDI chuck from the lathe and then I mounted the drive spur in the live
Center to start roughing the blank I
could tell from the get-go that this black palm was a very different wood its
splintered and just chipped out like crazy and it produced a lot of finer
dust versus larger chips like that wonderful red heart from day two I would
have taken a lot more off the blank if I didn't know what was in store for me
next but I just blissfully moved on and I switched out the drive spur for the
drill chuck and the 3/8 of an inch mandrel like I did with the bottle
stopper I started at the business end of the bottle opener and I was just using
the round tool to put a nice sweep that would go into the hardware and this is
where the cutting started getting worse not only was it chattering and dusty
but the blank was actually starting to catch and stall if I tried to take too
deep of a cut hadn't really figured out what was going on but if you look
closely you can see that the drill chuck was actually free spinning in the
headstock let's watch that again in slow motion and look at the threaded
headstock keep spinning with the blank stalls
I pressed forward taking lighter and lighter cuts and still getting some
slowdown in stalling then I just decided to call it good and start parting off
the excess of the back of the handle
that made the stalling even worse and you can hear the drill chuck squealing
in the headstock it finally dawned on me that I needed some more pressure from
the tailstock to keep that drill chuck in the headstock nice and firm so I
cranked it down a bit to try to help things out but really this only made
things worse which I would realize in just a minute but before that here's a
sneak peak of de fors project I'm switching over from the mandrel and
Chuck and moving into something a bit smaller there are a ton of accessories
to make pins but I'll show you how I did it a bit differently than most make sure
you check the description or the end of the video for a link to the six days a
beginner woodturning playlist
all right so back to this disaster that was unfolding on my lathe I stopped the
lathe and you may have already seen it when the blank was stalling but there
was a massive split right at the end of the blank
yeah frankly I am lucky this thing didn't just explode on me while it was
turning because the palm wood is so fibrous it's prone to splitting and
there's no shoulder on my live Center so as I cranked it down it just split it
right into here's the difference between this live Center that I was using in the
stock live Center the stock one has a point but it's also surrounded by a
larger ring that's set back a bit now the aftermarket want to have it's just
conical the whole way if I had have used the stock live Center with the shoulder
then this probably would have happened because it would have stopped pushing
into the end grain also the headstock in the drill chuck were clearly an issue as
well since it was spinning installing I've since found out that there's this
thing called a draw bar or draw bolt that you can thread into the drill chuck
to hold it firmly into the headstock so here's my drill chuck it's got a two
empty Morse taper on it and that fits into the headstock or the tailstock and
it's also got a chuck key to lock the mandrels and drill bits but that's all
that's keeping the Chuck into the headstock is just pressure and friction
of this taper so if you look at the back of it doesn't have any female threads on
the end the drill truck that I link to in the description has quarter-twenty
threads on the end of it so you can use a bolt through the headstock just like
I'm pushing through this ejector tool you can thread that into the drill chuck
and then use a large washer knob to pull the chuck tight into the headstock now I
have a link below in the video showing this technique if I had one it would
have kept the drill chuck from spinning freely installing the blank out those
were the lessons I learned after the fact in the moment I just cut my losses
literally I sawed it off the excess of the blank then I smooth the end with a
sander I went through the same finishing step as the previous day's I didn't
video it but then I installed the bottle opener hardware and it was done for all
the hassle this thing turned out really nice and that ingrain though a pain in
the neck looks beautiful on the handle I hope you can take some of these mistakes
and lessons I learned and apply them to your own turning I wanna give a big
thank you to Jett woodworking for sponsoring today's video there's a link
down below in the description you can see the Jett 1221 variable speed lathe
and find out all the information about it is an awesome machine so that's
a wrap on day three we're halfway through the six days of beginner
woodturning projects there's a playlist right here it'll take you to all the
different projects that are out there if you're not subscribed to the channel
already I'd love to have you as part of the team and until next time guys get
out there and build something awesome