I wondered about the black pipe, thought that may work well. Yes, some hickory would be good. I may have someone coming near Clyde Sunday or Monday. Maybe they could meet you? PM me if that may work.
One big question I have. How do you figure out the best fit of the socket? Is it trial and error? Fit and refit? Is there some way to make a model to follow?
Mike,
I'll be glad to meet your "rider" and pass along some hickory. We can PM and work that out.
The black iron pipe does work well. Plus, go on about any jobsite and the sprinkler contractors are glad to give you their short scrap pieces. I think I used 3/4" diameter pipe.
The first step in making a new socket tennon is to clean up up the socket on the steel. They're oftem mushroomed and need to have the burrs filed off. If they're too bad, I heat them in the forge and flatten out the mushrooming on the horn of the anvil. My Dad has the forge set-up and I usually stock pile a bunch of "needy" chisels and other things before I go fire up the forge. I use an old shotgun brass barrel cleaning brush in the drill press to clean up the inside of socket, this gets the rust and crud out so the socket will seat and stay better. I can determine the size of the tennon several ways. First, I have a box of old chisel handles that I try to find a match to the shape/size/taper of the tennon. There's lots of different old handles in that box, so I can usually find a match or close. If not, I wad up tin foil and pack down in the chisel socket. This gives you an exact pattern of the inside of the socket to work off of. You can then take the tin foil pattern and use your calipers to transfer the size to the tennon you're turning. If you turn the final tennon last and at the tailstock end and without any excess wood, you can take theh handle on and off the lathe to test fit it to the steel, and fine tune the fit. You can also sandpaper it some to fine tune after it comes off the lathe. Hickory, ash, maple and other domestic will compress "a little" when you drive the tennon in the socket steel, so they are more forgiving. The exotics are not. Any really hard wood (cocobolo, ebony, gonco alves, , the tennon must be an exact fit because it will not compress or give any, none, it's just hard. I also drill the lathe centers in the blanks. The first cocobolo handle I made, I tried to drive the lathe center into the balnk, and the blank split from one end to the other
. The stuff is just hard and doesn't give, even for a little lathe center point. The flip side is that since it is so hard, it turns and polishes super well. I love turning exotics because they turn so well. Well this has gotten windy. Maybe I need to do a tutorial on turning handles?? :icon_thum