Saturday:
My brother is a music major and has been making and experimenting with making orchestra conducting batons with my taig. He has taken a more freehand/woodturners approach to it. I got him a bearing center for the tailstock and a wood turners tool rest to go on my lathe and a set of turning tools for x-mas. We actually found an older taig on craigslist locally today and bought it for $50. It was a total steal. Much better condition than I anticipated, very smooth, only really needs a belt and new mounting board, which I have.
Anyway, I've been trying to contribute and help with figuring out the lathe and help him with designs. We got some Wood and acrylic pen blanks from woodcraft and some dowels for the shaft.
Here is one of the ones I made.
It is one of the cool marble swirl looking blanks.For the handle, I drilled a 3/16" hole all the way through And only cut with the taig radius turner. I turned a small aluminum round to plug the bottom of the hole. Used a milling collett and the bearing center to hold the long shaft to be sanded to a point. Hope to have more photos of these soon. We are setting up my brothers lathe tomorrow and should be turning out several of the batons.
Sunday:
As mentioned above I found an older taig on craigslist that my brother bought for $50. After a new belt, a new mounting board (a discarded piece of formica countertop that matches the rest of the newly redone workshop), and a good cleaning, and a new plug and switch it was up and running.
Mine in the foreground working on a baton shaft dowel and his in the back turning a handle out of zebrawood. I made a small aluminum adapter to center the 12" dowel on the needle bearing tailstock while the other end is in a milling collett. I'm using a scrap piece of 8" inch long 1/4" steel bar in the toolpost as a flex support for shaping the shaft to a tapered point.
