Wood Working



	Welcome to my woodworking page, this is where I will share some of the things I am working on at present. Recently (Feb, 1999) I acquired a *Ornamental Turning* attachment for my Nova 3000 lathe. Ornamental Turning is a type of decoration which was popular during the 18th &19th centuries. Due to the high cost of the equipment involved it was restricted to a very few. It is somewhat of a lost art today with very few practicing professionals or hobbyists. I have just begun my journey in this field and will try to document a little of what I learn in the hopes that it might inspire or assist others with similar interests. I am a member of the AAW and the Society of Ornamental Turners which I just joined. Should you have any information, questions or comments on what is here, please feel free to email me .

This link takes you to: The International Society of Wood Collectors!

Ornamental Turners International Society in the United States. You may contact Alan Bugbee at 860-658-4764

This link takes you to: The American Association of Woodturners!

The pictures on this page are all taken with the new Kodak DC265 Digital Camera. I can't recommend this camera enough and am very pleased with it. Feel free to take a look and leave me email if you have either questions or comments. I just sort of threw this page together and its sort of clunky because of that. Ill try to get it spiffed up over the next month or so as I really would like to have an informative and interesting Woodworking section on my site.. Enjoy!

My Lathe

I purchased my Nova 3000 last year about September of 1998. Having had a Bowl Lathe for about 6 or 7 years now I really wanted to do some spindle work. After a lengthy investigation of all the lathes available for under $3000.00 and a tremendous amount of help from the guys on rec.crafts.woodturning , I decided the Nova had the best bang for the buck. Just some of the reasons I decided this were; cast iron bed, bed extensions available separately, rotating head stock, 16 inch swing over bed, plus I could get it with a 1.5 HP variable speed DC motor. The package out the door like this was about $1300.00 from Woodcraft USA . Woodcraft has a great 1 year return policy which I felt would give me the time I needed to determine if the lathe met the specifications stated. I can say with pleasure that it not only met them, it far exceeded my expectations and is my favorite tool in the shop.

How I installed my Lathe

The Bench you can see in the picture above was purchased about 5 years ago at Home Depot for about $99.00. I had been using it for a Record CLB-22 bowl lathe and was able to make it strong enough by bolting it directly to the garage wall. I also kept 5 - 100 lb. bags of blasting material on the bottom shelf which I am sure helped a lot. By this time the Nova lathe had been in the box awaiting a new bench or a modification of this one for about two weeks. My garage is of the single car variety and is quite small, for this reason another bench didn't seem prudent, but it was unknown if this bench could be made worthy of the Nova. Anticipating the American Woodworkers Show in Fort Washington on Nov 6th, I decided the show and a credit card could solve all my problems:-)

While at the show I talked with quite a few turners and company reps, I also talked with the Woodcraft USA people. I must state that I almost took the Nova back when I saw the Vega lathe being demonstrated . The entire bed comes with the Vega and seems to be nicely made . After much painful buyers remorse and the proper amount of reflection though, I came to the conclusion that the Nova better served my purposes because of the indexing head, the 1.5 HP motor, $500 less expensive and it was already in my garage. And now that I have had the Nova for about 6 months and done quite a few turnings, I would not trade it for the Vega. I have talked with Vega owners and they all say the steel bed vibrates too much. One thing struck me as very nice about the Vega lathe or more truthfully about how it was setup, they had it on a roller stand which allowed them to move it around the show floor. They were also selling these stands there for $109 for the larger ones, one of which I purchased. I then rededicated myself to the modification of the bench already at home and could not wait to get started.

Back to the Bench, I decided to make it as strong as possible by overbuilding it. I predrilled and put a 4x4 in the end vise and bolted it to the end of the bench as an extension, this was done to lengthen the bench to better accommodate the 20" bed extension that was purchased. I then used 3/4" MDF everywhere I could to join all surfaces together to ensure there would be no jacking of the legs and no movement longitudinally. This actually worked out quite well as I have two complete 4x8 sheets of 3/4" MDF on the bench now! With the top being covered in two layers over the top of the bench. The top was then drilled and bolted with 3/8" bolts through to the leg system. This makes it nearly impossible to shift in any direction. The bench now weighs about 300 lbs. with all the MDF and the original weight itself. I also added two 100lb bags of blasting material to a second shelf I built underneath the manufactured one. The last thing I did was to bolt the lathe to the top all the way through all four layers, including three bolts in the middle of the top and one through each leg system as well. I tested the bench by outboard turning a 30" piece of 3" thick maple which was heavily out of balance. The bench stayed where it was and the lathe turned it quite easily.

The last thing was to get the lathe and bench into the roll around which turned out to be less difficult then first thought, I slid one end of the base under and then the other by jacking each end with a lever. The only difficulty was self created, I had been too cautious when I bought the roller stand and had purchased the longer of the three available as I had not measured the length of the bench. It turned out that I had to cut 10" off of each of the extension bars on the roller stand so it would fit the shorter bench. I didn't mind though it worked out beautifully.


This shot shows the motor mount, head stock, outboard turning attachment and motor control panel..	A shot of the headstock rotated about 35 degrees and the outboard turning attachment.	Click here to see a close-up of the new Nova 3000 cast iron motor mount plate introduced in 1998.	Click here to see the drive control panel and its mount.	Here is the back of the control panel plate I built.	Tail Stock and the Ornamental Turning Attachment on the bed at the same time.

The set of images above show the motor assembly and allows one to see Nova's newly designed and added motor mount casting which is the most significant change made to the 3000 that I am aware of in1998r. (Thank you to the Gentleman who notified me by e-mail that this modification had been made) The Leeson 1.5HP DC variable speed motor is somewhat larger in length than the 1 HP usually provided by Woodcraft with the set. As I am interested in doing relatively large spindle turnings and bowls, I opted for the 1.5HP 230 volt model. This was done for a number of reasons, the first of which is that by running a DC motor at a lower voltage you decrease the speed but also reduce the effective HP at the same time. By going to the 1.5HP I am attempting to minimize the amount of HP loss over the range recommended for the types of turnings I wish to do. The second reason is that it was only $50.00 more to do so:-).

The last thing I did was to build a panel to hold the motor controller to the motor. Because the Nova allows you to swing the headstock 360 degrees the possibility exists of tangling the headstock in the cord that goes to the controller box. I took a 2 " wide 7" long Steel angle and beat it on my anvil till the angle was about 120 degrees. I then mounted a piece of 7" x 7" aluminum plate to the angle. The controller was then bolted to the plate and the angle to the motor base mount. The controller now swings along with the motor and the head stock and is out of the way yet very reachable. I learned with the bowl lathe that you never want to be next to anything that is on the lathe when you start the motor. That seems like the worst time to be there, so this mounting of the controller means I am always away from the turning when switching the motor on.

My Ornamental Turning Page	My Turning Gallery

Well that's it for now, if you have any questions or comments feel free to e-mail me.

P.S. Don't forget to look at the Woodworking Plans Page . This list seems to have a little something for everyone.