Pendant Backer Plate Howto/Mini-review

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Most pf the back is not turned. See Dean's pics at the beginnig of this thread.

You turn the edge and a bit of the back and the rest is sanded by hand. You could make the piece the pendant attaches to a bit smaller, but might risk it coming off as you turn the front.


BobBurt said:
Sorry....Do you turn the back side???? or Do you just leave it????? I understand you have to finish it by hand

Can you explain how the back is done???? PLEASE

Thanks
Click to expand...
 
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Yes Bob .... Bob has it right... (tell me that's not confusing)

The back is flat and mostly not turned. My backer plate is smaller than the final piece so that I can round over the edge, but the majority isn't turned.

Dean
 
Hey Dean,
I just got my backer plate and jumped right in... I had some doublesided tape failures :eek: (still looking for the pendant... ) and wonder if it could be one of the following:
1. Older DS tape in Texas heat
2. Too fast (1800 rpm)
3. Too thick of material. Started with regular corian, then scrap pine, both 1/2" thick.

Maybe combination of all?
 
I recieved my plates today. The main plate is very straight forward and I have no questions about it but the other plate with all the holes along the edge still confuses me. Is it an index plate similiar to what my lathe uses? How do you use it?

Thanks
 
byounghusband said:
Hey Dean,
I just got my backer plate and jumped right in... I had some doublesided tape failures :eek: (still looking for the pendant... ) and wonder if it could be one of the following:
1. Older DS tape in Texas heat
2. Too fast (1800 rpm)
3. Too thick of material. Started with regular corian, then scrap pine, both 1/2" thick.

Maybe combination of all?
Click to expand...

I don't think 2 or 3 are a problem... I go that fast when on the centered parts (not the offsets) and many of my corian start as standard corian samples, etc at 1/2 inch.

Maybe its the DS tape? I use the good pressure DS turning tape and have no issues in general.

Also what are you using for a backer? I used a hole saw to cut small discs out of a white laminate shelf board. The laminate is an EXCELLENT backer (until it gets too many holes from the offset holes).
 
wb7whi said:
I recieved my plates today. The main plate is very straight forward and I have no questions about it but the other plate with all the holes along the edge still confuses me. Is it an index plate similiar to what my lathe uses? How do you use it?

Thanks
Click to expand...

The index plate has MANY uses - only a few of which I think are discovered YET.

- I have tried the triangles that Rodney linked too.. VERY COOL!
- I have used it to rotate the piece after initial turning to make grooves at different arcs.
- If you have a patterned piece (grain or segmentation), you may want to rotate to put the hole in a specific place. The plate allows you to rotate the piece to position the hole where desired.

And I BELIEVE there will be more ideas to come.
 
different tapes will do different things. I have 3m carpet tape here at the house and it's not stout enough to hold. It basically twists itself off. I used the turners tape that Woodcraft sells in their store for my demo the other day, and if I used a block of wood and the tailstock to create a clamp for about 2 or 3 minutes it was darn near impossible to get the thing off after I was done turning it!
 
alphageek said:
The index plate has MANY uses - only a few of which I think are discovered YET.

- I have tried the triangles that Rodney linked too.. VERY COOL!
- I have used it to rotate the piece after initial turning to make grooves at different arcs.
- If you have a patterned piece (grain or segmentation), you may want to rotate to put the hole in a specific place. The plate allows you to rotate the piece to position the hole where desired.

And I BELIEVE there will be more ideas to come.
Click to expand...

I'm thinking jar tops for candles or jelly jars or whatever you wanted. A nice mason jar with a cookie mix made up inside with a lattice turned top would be great.

The book woodturning wizardry has a good section on lattice circles, but he doesn't have the fancy equipment that we do!
 
Hello all,

I hope you guys can help out with this. I'm trying to elongate the hole after it's been drilled toward the center of the pendant. Today, I turned a 1.5" pendant from some nice cocobolo. I turned it using the center hole in the backer plate, then move to the #2 offset hole for drilling which worked out fine. But if I start to open up the hole to soften the edge staying with the #2 offset (inline with mandrel) the hole simply gets wider as I remove wood but won't elongate more toward the center.

I've seen some pendants here where the hole opening is toward the center rather than just opened up, hope that makes sense. To do what I'm after, I don't know if you change the backer plate to a different setting (hole) or move the index plate to a certain number or a combination of both... confused about getting this right. When I figure it out then I can do it consistantly. Any help would be appeciated.

Thank,
David
 
David,

I believe the look that you are aiming for is done by cutting at almost 90 degrees to the way you cut to widen the hole. You didn't say what tool you use to widen the hole, but to make the whole more 'faded' you need to cut the pendant more like a scraper. AFAIK, this should work with any hole setting.
 
Hi alphageek, thanks for your reply. I use a 1/4" miniature round nose scraper to open up the hole. It came in a set of mini tools and works pretty well for this purpose. I also do a lot of duck and goose calls and it's always worked great for relieving back pressure and fluting the ends in calls.

Anyway, you may be right about cutting at 90 degrees to the hole. More softing I think needs to be done for a better look, something I will work on with these. Here's a pic of a Bocote pendant done last Saturday with just Mylands FP, not bad but I think a CA finish or spray lacquer would be far better. I'll continue working on the hole thing. Thanks,




 
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