Radius Cutter for Lathe Machine

[Ken Johnson]

I am interested in contacting anyone in the Winnipeg Area who has a Radius Cutter or Jig for a wood lathe machine and who could turn an Interlocking Wooden Cube puzzle into a sphere. The puzzle measures 6 Cm cubed with other puzzles reaching as large as 10.6 Cm. Any assistance in this matter would be appreciated. My Email address is johnsonken1947@hotmail.com
Tks,

[Bellsy]

Is the puzzle going to be able to come apart as a puzzle afterwards or will it it just become a turned sphere in the end?

Dave

[Ken Johnson]

Yes, the puzzle will come apart. There are 7 pieces are interlocking and I mean interlocking. It will not fall apart unless the "Key Pin of Piece" is removed. The initial or work copy puzzle is "Convolution" by Stewart Coffin. It measures 2.35" dia. I also have a tester that is Juha Levonen's No 2 which is again 7 pcs but measures 3" dia. The puzzles are medium density wood. It is our intention to eventually use our exotic woods to convert puzzles to fully functional puzzle spheres. I was led to believe that some 62% of the wood from some of the corner pieces would be lost during process. We thought by increasing the size of the outer pieces (thickness) it would make the puzzle more durable. As I said we think?
Tks, Ken

[Bellsy]

I see complications with cutting this as there will be many changes in grain direction and the possiblity of moving pieces due to centrifigal forces upon it. Holding it would even be more of a complication.

Seeing the actual puzzle would help my curiosity probably.

Dave

[Ken Johnson]

I was wondering if you were familiar with BurrTools Program. If you have this program I could send you file for both puzzles which shows the individual piece illustrations and the puzzle assembly in 3-D format. This will also show you the locking mechanism. I could provide pictures of physical puzzles and would also like to provide you with a You Tube video listing "How to make a ball puzzle by Mike Toulouzas". The puzzle is almost identical in size and material.
Ken

[Tambotie]

Hi Ken what you are looking for is somebody with a ball cutting jig. If you have a lathe you could make your own just google ball cutting jig for wood lathe
Regards Tambotie

[Ken Johnson]

Unfortunately I do not have a lathe. I would probably hurt myself with it or the family pet. I basically try to design or upgrade puzzles using computer assistance. Recently some of the new programs out there have taken puzzle design to the highest level attainable, such as those designed by Jeff Namkung. Converting Cube to Ball design would only involve 6 or so puzzles.
Ken

[Woodwreck]

For hose of us less enlightened or experienced turners, could someone please post a pic of the sorta thing your are looking for just for my/our education. I asked a couple of forumites and searched a turner catalog to no avail, and am still in the dark.

Thanks.

WW

[Ken Johnson]

If you go on to You Tube and enter How to make a ball puzzle by Mike Toulouzas you will see the radius jig.
Ken

[Bellsy]

Yes, I have seen the jig before. I have actually drawn up plans to make a sphere cutting jig (his original concept) to work on my Oneway 1640 lathe. The idea that Mike is using works well.

I personally do not know anyone that has made the same jig or one like it.

Dave

[Leo Van Der Loo]

For hose of us less enlightened or experienced turners, could someone please post a pic of the sorta thing your are looking for just for my/our education. I asked a couple of forumites and searched a turner catalog to no avail, and am still in the dark.

Thanks.

WW

These are really standard ball turning setups and have been used for a very long time.

The problem for the OP is that the pieces do not make a solid ball, so the outcome will be kind of rough, unless he can use a molten hard wax or something like that to make it more stable, and then can remelt the wax after the ball is finished.

Here are a couple of U-tube videos the show metal, ivory and wood ball turning in both planes :thumb up:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ELcm-...eature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jJmXR...eature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M5MnjQriIuk

Leo in Kanata till Thursday morning (tomorrow), heading back to Atikokan

[Ken Johnson]

If I may just make a comment about the puzzles that I have. They are built on a 4x4x4 format consisting of 64 units. Once constructed they are solid and you could throw them against a wall and they would not come apart. There are even interlocking puzzles that if the key piece is damaged on the exterior the puzzle will not come apart. I have over 175 designs for 4x4x4 sequential interlocking puzzles. A key note should be the word sequential, certain pieces must be removed before other pieces can be removed. Removing one pieces especially the first piece does not make the puzzle fall apart in a high number of cases. Also, we would be talking accurate, accurate built puzzles with pieces virtually having 1 or 2 - 1,000 or so variance. These puzzles are fairly expensive and that is why I am looking for someone with a radius cutter.

[gwilki]

I've made a couple of sphere turning jigs. Neither is as refined as the one that Toulouzas made, but they get the job done. I played the video you mentioned. It looks like his puzzle only had 4 or 5 pieces. It would be interesting to see how one of 64 pieces would turn out. (No pun intended.) As you realize, many of the pieces making up the corners of the cube would be turned away to form the cube. Turners much better than me turn spheres free hand, and usually much quicker than I can with the jig. You may have better luck looking at local turning clubs and asking for anyone who can turn a sphere, with or without a jig.

[Ken Johnson]

I am sorry I always find myself using computer puzzle terminology when speaking about this subject mater. When one refers to a puzzle like the one in the video one refers to it as a 3x3x3 cube consisting of 27 cube units. A puzzle piece may consist of 1 or more units. I believe I know the puzzle in the video and it has 4 pieces. 1 Pc with 10 units, 1 Pc with 11 units, 1 Pc with 5 units and 1 Pc of 1 Unit, for a total of 27 units. Usually these 3x3x3 puzzles are fairly simple and have 3 - 5 moves to assemble/disassemble. I concentrate my efforts on 4x4x4 sequential interlocking puzzles that have 4 to 8 pieces with a maximum total of 64 units. They generally involve anywhere from 9 to 20 moves to solve. My friend who fabricates the puzzle for me has informed me that up to 62 percent of a puzzle unit (corner pieces) may be lost during the lathe process. We were exploring the idea of having the outside puzzle pieces 50 percent thicker to compensate for this problem. It does however limit the number of puzzles out there that this could be done with. If you look at the illustration for this website you will see what I am after. http://www.puzzlewood.de/gallery/pro...products_id=99
Ken

[gwilki]

Ken: I see what you mean now. There is no reason why a puzzle cube cannot be made into a sphere. Clearly, someone people are doing it. Your best bet to find someone local to you would likely be to contact any local woodturning clubs. Here is some contact information for a Winnipeg chapter of the American Association of Woodturners.

Herman de Vries
7 Forest Lake Dr
Winnipeg, MB Canada
Phone: 204-269-7541
Email: herm@hdv.net

[Ken Johnson]

Thank you! I appreciate and will contact him.
Take Care,

[Leo Van Der Loo]

If I may just make a comment about the puzzles that I have. They are built on a 4x4x4 format consisting of 64 units. Once constructed they are solid and you could throw them against a wall and they would not come apart. There are even interlocking puzzles that if the key piece is damaged on the exterior the puzzle will not come apart. I have over 175 designs for 4x4x4 sequential interlocking puzzles. A key note should be the word sequential, certain pieces must be removed before other pieces can be removed. Removing one pieces especially the first piece does not make the puzzle fall apart in a high number of cases. Also, we would be talking accurate, accurate built puzzles with pieces virtually having 1 or 2 - 1,000 or so variance. These puzzles are fairly expensive and that is why I am looking for someone with a radius cutter.

Just one comment on this, first off this is wood and wood will change dimensionally, to be able to assemble these pieces there has to be clearance or you would not be able to get these pieces to fit together, so therefore it will not turn like a solid piece of wood, I am not suggesting that the ball will come apart, but that the individual pieces are able to move, even it this is only little, it will make for possible end/edge splitting and rough /uneven surfaces.

You can certainly try to turn it like that, but you might run into problems for this reason.

Here is a jig made from wood and simple cutter that does work.

http://www.atbq.qc.ca/jm2/boules.htm