Shopsmith Forums

Good post on the dowel lathe Jerry. Thanks.

What method did you use to restore your chisel including getting the edge back?

I bought this chisel about 30 years ago and neglected it badly. To remove the rust I wiped it good with Nevr-Dull then used the nylon Weiler brush on my drill. This was the disk brush instead of the cup brush. The disk brush is rated medium to fine and the cup brush is rated coarse.

These nylon brushes are becoming my goto method for rust removal. I have not yet found a pure brass brush, but have not looked too hard. I would like to try one.

Edit: I just put the chisel on a grinder to get the edge back. I am going to have to invest in some sharpening tools.

Jerry Floren
St. Peter, MN

reible wrote:Hi,

How about this, you put it together with dowels that you put "hats" on. See sketch below:

[ATTACH]6919[/ATTACH]

You can make the top square or buy square dowels to cut to length. Drill them to match the dowel size you plan to use. Glue them together if you wish or put the round dowel in place and glue them on after. Lots of glue surface and the placement is taken care of, thus a little easier then just trying to glue to a flat surface... If you put the tops on first you then have a holder in the round dowel to shape the tops as bevels or rounds on the sander.

Ed

Edit:

Added a couple more sketches below

[ATTACH]6920[/ATTACH]

[ATTACH]6921[/ATTACH]

More food for thought... Excellent diagrams too. One thing to consider is that the face of each "hat" is only about 1/4" and they sit about 1/8" proud. That small size may be difficult to work with.

If you are willing to use a wooden dowel instead of metal, I really think that dowel rest for small turnings would work slick. I don't know how many pegs you need; I am guessing eight to 12. I messed around and can turn a peg in less than five minutes. Then it takes a couple of minute to face it. I only did two, and I am new to turning, and do not consider myself very good at this stuff. I just used a regular wood chisel for the turning.



The original dowel was 3/8 inch, and I think a 1/2 inch dowel would be better for what you need. Obviously, you would want to take more care on shaping the squares than I did. On one of them I used a drum sander. The other one I used the chisel to cut the four edges and then used the disc sander. If I took my time and sanded by hand, I'm sure it would look better.

I know you are concerned about the edge grain. What if you used a very dark stain for the plugs? It looks like the original Greene and Greene pegs were ebony.

Jerry Floren
St. Peter, MN

I happened to run across this yesterday when reading through my newest "Wood" magazine on pg 69 if interested in square ebony plugs (Greene and Greene style).

http://www.fastcap.com/aaccents-mortisetool.aspx

bluekayak, I may just give that system a try now. Thanks!

johnmccrossen, thanks so much for pointing that out! I think our Christmas time buying budget has been reached so I don't know if I'll be able to get this before Christmas, but as I really like the Greene & Greene style and hope to eventually build a lot of furniture in that style, I am definitely going to keep this in mind. It is quite an amazing solution. In fact, it's going on my wish list and I'm emailing LOML right now.

Heath,

I was thinking about a better way to square off the pegs on my ride home. A Dremel or similar tool would be great, but I don't have one. However, I think you could make a simple jig to sand the face of the dowel, and it might be better to sand it before turning.

I am thinking of a square block with a hole just large enough for the dowel drilled through the center. A hole the size of the one drilled on the steady dowel holder would be about right. Then place the dowel in the block and turn the block four times against sandpaper. If you have a disk sander for your Shopsmith, that might work. Not sure if this explanation is clear, but if not I could try it out or maybe draw a picture.

I think you could also use sandpaper on small block to do the actual turning if you do not want to use a chisel. Even something like an emery board might work.

Jerry Floren
St. Peter, MN

Start with a square dowel and sand off the end. It was less than a dollar. I used a drum sander, but I think a disk sander would work fine. This is really fast. Just a second or two on each of the four edges. The table was set at a pretty good angle. You can experiment and get the angle you want.



Wax the dowel and put it in the dowel steady rest.



Turn it, and a regular wood chisel like I used in the earlier posting worked great. Just apply very light pressure and slowly bring the chisel into the stock.



Here is the peg. You just have to cut it off. Sorry about the blurry focus, but my camera's batteries are dead. Hopefully, you get the idea from this.



If you have two Shopsmiths, or a way to sand the peg face without resetting the steady dowel, this works great. I don't think it would be hard to sand the peg faces by hand. Turning them is really easy, and I probably should have turned this one just a bit more. You could also finish up the turning with a small piece of sandpaper on a miniature sanding block.

Jerry Floren
St. Peter, MN

Thanks, bluekayak! I think I'm going to give that a try this weekend. I'm taking off from work all next week, and starting Saturday I plan on spending as much time in the shop as I need to to finish this project.

Good luck Heath. I am really a true beginner, and this is easy. Here are a couple of better pictures. I should say that I do not know exactly what a Greene and Greene peg looks like, but this method should get you close to putting a square peg in a round hole.





Jerry Floren
St. Peter, MN