Can anybody in internetland suggest any cheap home-made wax
working tools?
Get some pieces of wood dowel, perhaps 1/4 inch diameter, 4 inches
or so long, or as you like. Drill a small pilot hole into each end,
and hammer a largish finishing nail into the end far enough so it’s
secure. Now hammer the head of the nail flat (sideways). The
resulting “spoon” or blade shape can be further shaped with files,
sanding disks, etc. Don’t heat these up if you want any cutting edges
you form to remain fairly usable, since the hammering work hardens
the mild steel, and heating will anneal it. these aren’t exactly pro
quality tools, but are extremely low cost to make, and quick too, and
for basic level wax carvers, will work fine.
In addition, I am going to try to rig a wax lathe with a 1/30 HP
(not 1/3 misprinted) motor I found. Will it work? How would you
hold the piece of wax for turning, either solid or holed ringwax? I
would appreciate any suggestions. Thanks.
Better if you have a flex shaft with a #30 style jacobs chuck. If
you do, then find at the hardware store, the type of nut that’s
designed to be driven into a drilled hole in a piece of wood, with
protruding spikes around the threaded center section holding into the
wood. I seem to recall they’re called T nuts, but I could be wrong on
that. They look like a disk shape with an internally threaded tube in
the center, and usally 4 spikes cut and bent down from the rim of the
disk to be paralell to the tube. Anyway. Assuming you figure out
what I’m talking about and can find some, with a thread that’s small
enough so the matching bolt will fit into your jacobs chuck, then get
a matching bolt, perhaps an inch long, and a standard hex nut as
well, to fit. Cut the head off the bolt. thread first the hex nut,
then the T nut, onto the end, with the prongs facing out. The thread
of the bolt should come just to the end of the hole in the T nut, and
then the hex nut is tightend up against the T nut to jam it in
position. Or you could silver solder the T nut to the bolt, so long
as neither your bolt or T nut is cadmium or zinc plated. If either of
those, then use low melting lead solder or stick with the hex nut and
no solder. Anyway, the T nut can be heated up and melted into a chunk
of wax rod, into the end. Try to get it centered reasonably well. The
thread of the bolt then fits into your jacobs chuck and voila, you’ve
affixed a block of wax to your rotating tool for turning with files,
scrapers, or whatever. You can brace the whole thing over your bench
pin in use, resting any turning tools against the pin as well. Files,
though, are safer. This, by the way, is the same way that wax rods
are mounted to the Matt wax lathe. Simple, and it works well. The
Matt lathe has additional bells and whistles, and is easier to use
for more tasks, especially making an inside ring hole, or for
delicate turning with turning tools, since the tool rest is built in.
But you can do it the simple way too.
There’s also a neat little tool for sale you might consider. I seem
to recall a name like ringmaster or some such. Maybe waxmaster.
dunno. It’s a threaded rod with a fixed stop nut halfway down, then a
thread free area that mounts to your flex shaft. a Tapered plug rests
against that fixed nut. Another is mounted in the other direction,
and secured with a second movable nut. To use, it also comes with a
series of plastic collets, with matching tapers drilled into each
side. You mount the right size collet on the shaft between the nuts,
and then a section of wax ring tube stock, which you have previously
filed, scraped, or otherwise made the desired ring size, gets mounted
on that collet. When you tighten the end nut, the collet expands,
holding the wax in place, ready for you to lathe turn just as you
might do with the wax mounted to the T-nut I previously described. As
I recall, this was not a costly tool. Maybe 20 bucks? It would be a
little harder to actually make, so it makes sense to buy it if you
can afford, and want it. The advantage over the T nut method is that
because you start turning with the inside hole already the right
size, the band can easily be made concentric, and as well, it’s easy
to flip the band end to end while working, or to remove and remount
the band as you work. The T nut method doesn’t allow that.
hope that helps
Peter