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Site updated:
 23 Jul, 2010

Now that I have your attention, let’s be clear about this, this article has positively nothing to do with big fish with lots of teeth. What it does have to do with is Button Jaws.

For quite some time now I’ve been casting covetous glances at the button jaws which Axminster Power Tools sell for a mere £42 to £106 depending on size. And let’s face it, size does matter, so I suppose I want the big ones for which, read ‘most expensive’. Call me mean if you want ( you can see me later) but £106 plus post doesn’t get them onto my list of ‘Let’s just pop out and buy one’ tools.

My wife recently requested a bowl for a favourite niece, so I wanted to make it a bit special. I’ve been turning for some years now and all my bowls have that annoying ring on the bottom which tells everyone how you held it on the lathe, so I thought it would be nice to do one with a flat bottom, so to speak. Back to the button jaws. Eventually I came up with an idea that I’m sure you’ll all tell me isn’t original, but hey, it’s the first time I’ve done it.

Axminsters’ button jaws seem to be an additional set of jaws that screw onto your chuck, assuming your chuck just happens to be a set that will accept such things. That was no good for me as it would mean a new chuck too. So what I came up with eventually was a disc of fairly thick chipboard which I could

fit to a faceplate. I wanted to be able to use the faceplate for other things, so everything is bolted rather than screwed. The procedure is really quite simple. I measured how big a disc my lathe could handle—in my case 14 cms. , and drew a circle that big on a bit of scrap chipboard I just happened to have left over from flooring the loft of my garage. (Did I mention that we have decided to move house? And yes, the flooring will be coming with us!)Just for good measure I drew more circles down to 6 cms as I thought this might be useful when mounting bowls in terms of getting them central. I divided the circle up into 6 segments and then drew 6 radial lines starting at 6 cms out and going out to 13 cms. Using a router, I then cut 8 mm grooves where those radial lines were marked. Again using the router, I cut the circle out from the chipboard.

I offered the faceplate up to the board as centrally as possible and marked and drilled four 4 mm holes to take the bolts through from the faceplate.

 Fixing the bowl

The next problem was how to hold the bowl to the board and for this, I spent the massive sum of £1 buying up the local hardware stores’ entire stock of 1 inch tap washers. And as luck would have it, I already had enough M8 bolts, washers and wing-nuts and 4 mm nuts and bolts. I didn’t want wing nuts flying around anywhere near my fingers, so they went behind the board whilst on the front there is the top of the bolt, an M8 washer, and a tap washer which are all tightened onto the bowl rim. Notice the paper under the bowl to avoid the rim getting scratched.

Finally, all I had to do was part off the ring on the bottom. The result was the sycamore bowl with a flat bottom which was on show at the last meeting.

Now, who’s next on the Christmas list!

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