It's a little different than most techniques on how I secure the wood blank to the lathe, but I didn't want to buy another set of jaws for my chuck. So I improvised a bit with what some stuff that I had laying around.
For starters, I start with a 4" square blank. I have some center points on a jig to mark the spots that I want to drill at.
A couple of quick taps on the block, and the blank is marked and ready to be drilled.
I use a 9/64" drill bit to drill through the blank at each one of the dimples.
Then I use a 1/2" forstner bit to drill down .25" into the blank at each location.
Then I flip over the blank and drill the center hole with a 7/8" forstner bit down to the 1/2" hole.
Next I trim off the corners on the band saw. It's easier doing it this way than on the lathe.
Now is where my homemade mandrel comes in. It's a 1/2" bolt with the head cut off. I use it like a compression type mandrel. It fits right into my collet chuck. I also have a couple of custom made spacers made from some scraps that were laying around.
The left spacer fits snugly against the collet to provide some room between the blank and the collet chuck. The right spacer fits inside of the 7/8" hole made by the larger forstner bit.
Once everything is secured to the lathe, round off the blank and square up the front and back sides.
Then start marking out the dimensions for the outside of the pot call, shelf for the top surface, and you can also mark the pedestal diameter as well.
Start removing excess material where it is not needed.
Once you get down to where the bottome sound holes are exposed, stop removing material. Clean up all of the cuts, cut the pedestal height to the dimension that you want, and start sanding.
The only things left to do now are to put a finish on the blank, glue in a toneboard, and glue in the top surface.
That's how I get it done. Hope you enjoyed.
Brian
