Home made turning tools and jigs|Breezy Hill Turning

Tools and Jigs

These are some of the jigs solutions I have come up with, copied or bought that I thought maybe of interest to other turners. The pictures and short descriptions should be enough information, but if you have questions feel free to email me.

I got the idea for the indexing jig from Bill Johnston on the Kestrel Creek site. I find it useful for layout, carving and use with the router sled. I had a local welder weld the table perpendicular to a post that fits in the banjo. The table comes in handy for use with the router and layout.

Aluminum calipers I made out of 1/4" sheet metal range in size measuring wall thickness on vessels 12' to 24" deep. I got the idea from an old AAW article written by Jim Hume.

The buffing station was my idea. I didn't like the limitations of buffing on the lathe. My solution involved a mandrel powered by a 1625 rpm motor. It has a Beall on the right that will allow access into deep bowls due to length of the shaft, and has a smaller screw type mandrel that will allow use of smaller buffs, including goblet buffs. Each drawer is dedicated to buffs for one grit and the compound. The grinder has a cardboard disc that is charged with polishing compounds and puts a mirror polish on carving tools.

The belt sanding sharpener from Jon Siegel is now my go-to sharpener. I use it free hand for bowl gouges (I like the Michelson grind I learned from Johannes), and the indexing is a snap for sharpening roughing gouges, skews, parting tools… It has several advantages. 1) No hollow grind 2) It is very safe as the belt move up, so no chance of the belt grabbing the tool 3)changing belts/grits is a snap 4)buff to the right removes wire edge from grinding 5) because of the indexing, setting the V block and getting a new edge takes a matter of seconds and removes very little metal. See Jon's article for more info.

I use Lyle Jamieson's hollowing rig with a new laser light that Jeff Salter just released. This laser has a really nice feature that allows one to set an offset for the wall thickness then turning the head will alter the angle of the light to the tip of the tool allowing the user to change the angle as the vessel curves change without removing the rig from the vessel. Works like a charm.

I made the woodburner/vaporizer after seeing Graeme Priddle demo it. He has shown this at many venues, and there are now a number of articles that show you how to build one, like this. This is a high energy burner and is great fun to use, but not for the faint of heart.