As promised, a coupla pics of my scratch stock. My pal Pete (who's a fantastic engineer) saw the Garrett Hack version at West Dean and thought it could be improved on. The beauty of Hack's idea is that it's simple...no more than a saw cut and the thread can even be tapped directly into the wood ('specially if something like ebony is being used) The disadvantage is that as soon as the cutter goes further away from the body, it starts to flex which isn't good. What Pete's done is to take the design of a traditionally shaped stock, machine it out of solid brass and then add an adjustable fence to it so that it's rock solid even when the cutter is used, say, 40mm away from the edge. Pete let me have a high speed steel cutter for it (so it needs to be ground to shape) but it works just as well with a cutter that could be made from something like an old cabinet scraper or saw blade. I haven't used it in earnest yet but I've got a small project coming up where it might be useful.
2 comments:
Oh wow, I see what you mean. That's a beauty. Thanks for posting the pics, Rob.
I suppose your friend could make an additional fence with a pivot point rather than a straight piece of stock so that you can use it on curved work. Seems like something he might be able to market to L-N!
Kari - I think that may well be an option that Pete might play around with at some time. As it is, the SS can only be used on straight work.
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