POTD was for my wife. Last year she gave me the clearance to buy a Grizzly G0709 14” x 40” lathe. Well, she wanted a lathe of her own and bought one off eBay. She does a different Christmas ornament every year for family and friends, this year’s ornament will be a decorated egg. Her lathe will be used to draw evenly spaced circles on the egg for the various patterns. Probably double as a holder as she paints them to.
Go figure, her lathe didn’t work as well as she hoped straight out of the box. One base is adjustable (we’ll call it the tailstock), the other base is fixed. There isn’t enough friction on either the headstock or tailstock to rotate the egg without it moving laterally a little bit. She was hoping to hold a pencil in one hand and rotate the egg with the other. So, she asked if I’d make her a pencil holder so she could turn the headstock and tailstock at the same time which keeps the egg from shifting laterally. What, go in my shop and make something!
I used a 1” aluminum round drilled and reamed to a few thousandths over the pencil diameter. Made a base plate from 3/16” aluminum and tacked them together with my TIG welder. The 1” round had a ½” diameter shoulder turned to fit into a ½” hole drilled into the base for locating during the welding.
I didn’t show the operation, but milled a window on one side of the pencil holder for better visibility of where the pencil is hitting the egg. Should work out well for her.
Bruce
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