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Help tuning small Bone parts

I am trying to turn string pins for a guitar out of ebony and bone. They are about inch long .290 at round part on top and tapers with a lenght ways grove for guitar strings. I have a wood lathe, big metal lathe and a jewelers lathe. I would like to make these fast enough for resale in sets of 6. I need a way to get the material down from rough odd size blanks to round stock a little over 1/4 inch in diameter. I have tried to turn these rough blanks that are about 10 inches long but it broke because of being too weak. Any ideas for a dowel maker ? Would it be better to dress a grinding wheel in the final shape I would like the ball end to be and gind this shape while in lathe ? How about the tapered end that goes down to nearly 1/8 inch diameter? How about doing the taper first and holding it in tapered collet ? Any one been there, done that? Thanks Dale.

Reply to
Dale Randall
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A buddy makes cellos and he made a device that looks like a pencil sharpener to put the taper on. He buys blanks.

Reply to
Tom Gardner

Greetings Dale, Though I haven't tried your exact situation I have done similar work. The stock was held on the rough O.D. and each part was turned to finish and parted off. Seems a little odd maybe to do it this way but the stock is supported by the large dia. and so long, thin parts were possible. Sometimes, when then the part was long enough to need this I used a female live center to support the finish turned end. I have turned ceramic that was too delicate to rough and finish. The stock was about .750 and finished part was 5mm (.197) dia. All taken in one pass. Cheers, Eric R Snow

Reply to
Eric R Snow

Look at the violin peg shaper in the following URL.

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You might use something like this for the initial shaping of the shank. After that a special collet or holder would allow you to finish the top of the pin in a lathe.

I think some rough shaping might be in order beforehand. A dowel jig might work with ebony, I don't know about bone.

Cheers,

Kelley

Reply to
Kelley Mascher

We make custom pins with this taper, but a different head shape. A few thoughts for you:

1) Forget about resale at any reasonable price. The factories can spit them out so much faster than you can that you have no hope of competing with them. The only way to make any money at something like this is to make a really cool product that a few people are willing to pay top dollar for, and to charge that top dollar. 2) Consider investing in a very small wood lathe, such as a Klein (our favorite). It's the right scale for what you're doing. Unless your metal lathe can go Really Fast (like 5000 rpm) it takes forever to do any real wood turning on it, and especially forever to sand, and you don't want sandpaper near it anyway.
Reply to
Alden Hackmann

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