My current interest is trying to replicate cast bronze age daggers and tools. In researching old original specimens I found most daggers had cylindrical handles so I got the idea why not turn the basic pattern on my lathe. This is a start on trying. I made a wood cylinder and then picked out a style to try. Still a bit of turning and sanding to do. It's a metal lathe but using the feed and travel free hand I came up with this so far. The blade portion will be worked by slicing both sides off then finished with a 1" vertical band sander and hand tools. Just an experiment. Melterskelter gave me some advice on pouring a lateral mold, elevate the end opposite the sprue a bit. Worked great, best pour yet, here's the result. This one is bronze. Thanks Denis ! I'm still learning ,,,,,
My South Bend 9 gets the wood treatment once in awhile too. It gives me the motivation to give it a good thorough cleaning and oiling cause I get more dust than chips. A common method for making turned patterns is to start with two pieces of planed or otherwise-flat wood and glue them together with a few sheets of newspaper soaked with Elmer’s glue and clamped overnight. Then make the pattern as usual using the joint line to align your lathe centers. Afterwards the pattern is separated by means of a chisel or tapping a thin knife blade down the joint. The dowel holes for alignment can be drilled whenever you think it’s prudent to do so, but I’ve drilled through-pilot holes just after gluing and then opened them up after turning. A hard dowel in soft wood can create sanding issues sometimes so it depends on what your comfortable with. At any rate the method allows for a two piece pattern with flat surfaces and defined parting line giving you defined references for sawing or other operations. Given the thinness of your blade, splitting the pattern might not be practical to use as loose pieces because of warpage or delicateness but they could be attached to a match plate. Even if you chose not to split a pattern at all you would at least an accurate parting reference. Another thing that comes to mind is to make a 2-piece handle, a separate blade pattern, and assemble them in the mold. Just some food for thought. Having said all of that, what you’ve done on this project should work just fine. Your other ones turned out great and this one will too. But the 2part-and-glued pattern is a great weapon to have in the arsenal, not just for turned patterns, but many split pattern projects. It’s a good idea to test the process before committing a lot of work to your pattern so you know how the materials will behave. Pete
Thanks Pete, hadn't thought of a 2 piece blank for turning. I can see where it would be an improvement. I like the idea of having a visible center line during shaping. I lay out the pattern center lines to start but then of course you loose them when shaping. I had given thought on drilling a center hole for a dowel to join the handle and blade, something to ponder on more. I did do it to mate the pommel on one pattern, worked out good.
If sanding over the end grain of the dowel causes it to tend to stand proud of the surrounding wood, you can use a short dowel to span from one half to the other but not fill the drilled hole entirely. Then fill up the hole with a plug cut from similar wood using a plug cutter of appropriate size or by turning a plug to size on the lathe. This is a technique often used to fill holes in wood boat hulls to plug holes over wood screws. By aligning the grain of the plugs parallel to the wood plank, the plank and plug sand very similarly and the plugs sand fair with the plank. Same thing would work for a pattern. Woodcraft plug cutter: Denis
Thanks for tip ! I've got some of those, never thought of using them. I've also used spackling compound like for patching sheet rock. I had a few bad pours and used it to fill voids in the bad castings so I could use them for a pattern, also works well on wood patterns before sealing. It dries fairly quick and blends in good with sanding.
