Patternmaking Spade/Paddle Bits

[cae2100]

Well, I think Ive got most of the patternmaking stuff figured out, but I know where my weaknesses still lie, which are tapered holes for the patterns, ball shapes, and wooden balls (like you would use for ball cranks). Well, Ive been playing with ideas on all of those and ball shapes, the small ones, I could use with ball endmills, but fitting them in a drill is easier said than done when it comes to larger sizes, lol. Also most of my ball endmills are reground and undersize, so not good for accurate sizing.

Up till now, for the tapered holes, where you would want a hollow cast into a part without making a seperate core/core print, I would cut it out with a jigsaw and try to cut draft into it with my chisels/whittling knife, which always looks pretty bad. Recently I got a spindle sander, which works for larger bores, but anything below 2", it can get interesting to cut it out and sand it, so I was playing with the idea of making some tapered drill bits that would drill through the pattern, and leave a tapered bore, all in one step, lol. Ive made homemade spade bits before and they're pretty easy to make, so I figured I'd go with that style. This is what came out of the idea. These bits are all made from coil spring for the shanks so the drill chuck doesnt tear it up, and spade parts are made from bed frame as usual, lol. They were all stuck in the forge to heat to red hot and left to cool slowly in the forge to stress relieve them and make the weld joint much much stronger/less brittle, and so I could machine them on the lathe to size/shape.

They do have radiused corners on them too, so as it drills down in, it creates a hole with fillet already added in. The sizes overlap a little bit, but it goes from 2" to 1 1/2" at largest, all the way down to 1 1/2" to 1" for the normal wide ones, then the sharper angle one goes from 1" to 1/2" round, which should be easy to pull from the sand. They usually go in 1/2" size increments, but I have a center spot where I want the hole to start on the pattern, and have the circle drawn out with a compass like I usually do on patterns, but I just drill down till I meet the circle layout line, and the hole is done.

The ball socket shapes, Ive been looking at the ones pipemakers use, like the tobacco pipes, since they use a U shape in the pipe bowls, they use a custom ground spade bit like this. There is 3/4", 5/8", and 1/2" ones, which larger ones, I can easily make them when the need arises.

I had a pattern that I needed to make a while back and it had those sizes, which was for a brass block for a glass blower/lampworker that was going to be used after cleaning up to make marbles with, hence those sizes. Ive had a few other patterns that needed half round divots in them of those sizes too. Back then, the one, I didnt know how to do those shapes, so had to 3d print them, which they turned out like crap, and the other ones, I just carved in with my small carving chisels, but those spade bits will be much faster and result in alot cleaner and round holes/divots.

As for the balls, Ive thought about it and Ive seen some people making bits to make beads with using old spade bits, so Ill probably make a few of those in the sizes of 1/2", 5/8", 3/4", and 1", which is common sizes used to make ball cranks and such. Ive looked into just buying beads, but every local place here doesnt have perfectly round ones, and if you can find some, even online, they're all in metric sizes and usually undersize, so I figured that instead of fighting with them, I'd just make the beads myself, lol. I would have rather had actual balls, but I can always plug the holes up with some wax or something since it wont be seen after it's cast anyhow, lol. I have the blanks cut out and everything, just need to cut the profile and shape them, then all of the spade bits will be taken out and heat treated all at once.

As you can see, the spade bits, because they're technically a slow cutting style, they leave a very nice surface finish, which even in soft pine like I was doing there, it was leaving a nice surface finish that needs very little work to finish it up and could easily be hit with some 240 grit sandpaper to get rid of the fuzziness and it'll be ready for finish. (after filling in the spur point/divot with some wax) I tested all of those bits so far using a cordless drill, but I can pretty much guarantee that they'll perform much better and leave a much smoother finish by using the drill press, and for the ball socket spade bits, they'll come out nice and round in the drill press too.

[cae2100]

Here's the ball/bead cutters, just finished everything up and they just need the very points adjusted still, but they're pretty much ready to go, just need to take them out and heat treat them and sharpen them now. As I said above, they make a 1", 3/4", 5/8", and 1/2" balls/beads, which are the sizes you need for ball handles on lathes and other pieces of machinery.

I do want to do some fine details on them before heat treating, but thats easy enough to do. (breaking sharp back corners and such)

I figured these bits would give someone an idea that's looking at idea on how to do holes with draft much easier or do various profiles of spade bits.

[Jammer]

Those are cool spade bits, I never would have thought about cutting in the angles like that.

[cae2100]

Yea, the tapered ones work really well. Ive had the idea for them for a while and after making a few homemade spade bits for larger size holes, (2 3/4-3") I thought that the amount of force really wouldnt be that much more if I were just to taper the sides and make them smaller, which they do require a little extra pressure to get the cut to start/drive the spur in at first, but after that, it drills like nothing and the resistance from the spur slows the bit down from digging in and cutting too fast, which in turn leaves a really really good surface finish on the bottom and walls. The only area it has a little issue with is just the transition between straight and end grain, which just leaves a tiny bit of fuzziness, but that's easy enough to fix with a tiny bit of sandpaper really to get rid of that.

Most spade bits are designed to chew through the wood at high speed by adding a screw onto the end of it to feed it quickly, or add aggressive chip breakers, but being homemade, they dont have any of that, so the feed is controlled by you, so you can go as fast or slow as you want, which slower you go, the better the surface finish. Normally I set up the spindle sander to sand the draft in holes around 10 degrees included angle, but I still have sand sticking sometimes in deep bores, so I made those spade bits 12 degree included angle, but they're 2" long for the spade parts, and drop a 1/2" from top to tip of spur, and the bits technically overlap a tiny bit so that if a hole isnt deep enough, I can use the next size up to finish the hole to depth.

Another thing that they're good for is opening up existing holes, you can use one of those in a previously drilled hole and it'll open it up a little bit to be able to use a larger size drill in that hole, without needing to rely on that drive spur to center it, just put it into the hole while it's spinning fast and it'll self center itself.

[Rasper]

Fascinating stuff. Keep it coming, but only if you want to.

When I had a big sculpture studio in California, I spent as much time making tools as i did making sculpture. I first acquired the habit back when i was in the wooden boat-building business. After the early 1960's you pretty much could no longer buy the tools; you had to make them. The hardware too for the boats.

One tool I had that I did not make was one of these:

14718-E.jpg (84.45 KiB) Viewed 1667 times

A Fay and Egan Model 311 Lightning ship-saw. It had 48 inch wheels and used a 27 foot blade. I used it to cut the framing for an 80 foot sailing schooner.

Richard

[Jammer]

Not very safe! OSHA would have so many guards on there, you wouldn't be able to use it.

[Rasper]

That was what killed the boat yard business. My liability insurance in 1967 was 65 dollars a year. It would be more than that a day now. And OSHA wanted us to build handrails along the scaffolds we placed around hauled out boats to paint them. A scaffold consisted of some 2 x 12's on what we called trestles. Up one day and down two days later. Good God!

The absurd thing about OSHA was that they knew almost nothing about the reality of what they were regulating. When a band saw blade jumped off the wheel, all it did was to fall on the person using the saw. Nothing happened. The blade was no longer moving. But to some college-boy asshole sitting in an air conditioned office in Washington DC, imagining what went on out in the real world, anything was possible.

Richard

[cae2100]

I had to look that saw up, that thing is one very nice bandsaw, I wish I could have access to that thing for a few days, lol. From the size of it, it sounds like a bandsaw mill but with a table and tilting frame. I have a bunch of logs here that Ive been wanting to cut up into slabs for a few years, but no access to a bandsaw large enough to do it, even tho we have one here, just cant get to it and it's a big 3 phase delta/rockwell unit, but that's easy enough to fix really. I have a bunch of stuff like black locust and hedge apple/osage orange that I wouldnt mind turning into slabs/boards, lol. Up till now, Ive just split the stuff with the froe and used the hand planes on it to flatten the slabs since they're not long pieces, just pieces from the firewood pile really.

Also, Im good with stuff not being osha safe, means it's usable, and helps keep the idiots out of places where they dont need to be, lol. They would probably crap themselves if they saw half of the stuff in my shop, or most of the stuff I do for work when I go out on the route with my brother, with belts running everywhere and hand cranks on stuff that's spinning at high speeds, lol.

As for the other bits, Im still working on forging them out, and Im still not sure if I can actually do them up right. Ive tried making them before, but screwed them up when trying to grind/sharpen them, so now that I have the time, Im having another go at them, lol. They're kinda hard to explain, but they have a cone on the end that is like a reverse chamfer cutter, but they're sized for certain sizes of wooden dowels. With patterns, if the alignment dowels are too short, they dont align very well, and if they're too long, they tend to stick, and you can spend alot of time just trying to get it just right, so I thought of an idea of using more or less a pencil sharpener in a drill chuck, but it'll just spin down and cut a taper on the wooden dowels till it reaches the pattern, then it stops cutting. If you size the length of the cone/taper right, you can set it up so it'll cut a chamfer/taper on the dowels and only leave 1/8" or 3/16" of full size of the dowel left, so you have the right length of the dowel so it releases easily, but has perfect length for alignment without it sticking. Doing it this way, you can save alot of time trying to cut the dowels and everything to precise sizes/lengths, just give them a quick zip with that bit in the cordless drill, and all of the alignment dowels are perfect. It doesnt really trim them to length, but the important bit is mostly just that they are the same amount of contact area for the alignment holes.

[cae2100]

Here's the alignment pin/dowel trimmer bits that I had forged out before, but Im making virtually the same thing again to see if I can get it right this time, lol. The neck on the one was way too thin and ended up snapping off when I tried truing it up, and the other, I had messed up when grinding the cutting edge in, but they were a good learning experience anyways, lol.

I know they're not spade/paddle bits, but they're for patternmaking and should make things alot faster and easier than sitting there with a whittling knife trying to shape them by hand after they're in the pattern.

I believe I had made those bits, and these at the same time, which these are little roundover cutters, but they act like a little round bottom plane, so they can do flat or curved corners. You just run them along the corner of a pattern and it leaves a nice smooth round over that reduces the chances of chilled corners happening in iron castings, and it just feels good in the hands also. I use them all the time on my planes and other tools because it's a very quick and easy way to do roundovers on the edges of stuff. If you look at the little hand plane for cutting the groove at the bottom of vise jaws and on the molding planes/round bottom planes, you'll see that the edges were all rounded over using the smaller one.

The sizes are 1/8" roundover, and other is 3/16" radius for really large castings. They were made from the same garage door coil spring that alot of my other stuff is made from, and the handles were just turned from hedge apple/osage orange.

[Rasper]

Your tool-making puts mine to shame.

Richard