Sphere Resources

Here are some on-line resources for turning spheres:

The jig I was using is a Chef Ware Kits EZ-Jig. Click here for the link.

For the “octagon” method of roughing out a sphere, this blog post by Keith Larrett, gives the method with slightly higher precision than I did And, with pictures.

Jerry Takes came up afterward and briefly explained an alternative method for turning a sphere, using a bright light and a pencil drawing of a circle. Click here for one explanation of this method. There are more links at the bottom of the linked article.

Here is wordy description of the process I gave the other night for roughing out the sphere blank:

1. turn your blank to the desired diameter of the sphere, or perhaps a little over sized.
2. find and mark the “ends” of the sphere on the blank (transfer the diameter of the blank to the outside of the blank)
3. find and mark the center of the sphere on the blank.
4. from the center, measure and mark .2 of the diameter toward each end of the blank
5. at end end of the blank, use a parting tool to make a tenon .4 the diameter of the blank
6. use a spindle gouge to make a 45 degree cut from the lines established in step 4 to the tenon established in step 5, both ends of the blank
7. You should now have roughly a blank with the .4 measurement (.2 plus .2) across the top, equal to the .4 tenons and the 45 degree bevels
8. use a spindle gouge to round off the corners of the “octagon” and you have a fairly good representation of a sphere (some people actually add a step here to make a “16-sided” blank) before they do the corner rounding

Comment: if the first one doesn’t work out, use what you learned and try again.

Finally, thanks for all the nice comments about the demo the other night.

Tony Rozendaal