A few months ago we had a professional demonstrator at our club and as a time-filler towards then end of the afternoon, he turned an apple. His claim was that it was his way of turning a finished piece of fruit without having to use a screw chuck, but (and it's a big but) he had to use a timber blank almost twice the length of the finished fruit. This wrankled; quite a lot, so I made a few his way, then set about designing a jig to makle my own with minimal waste.
Here's the result. A compression chuck that the fruit slips into.
...an important feature is a small spiggot inside the chuck, that helps the fruit to find a true centre...
So...here's the method that I use.
1) prepare the blank between centres, then mount the blank in a scroll chuck, marking a ring about 30mm in from the outer end. This marks the most bulbous part of the pear and would be more like 50mm for an apple.
2)...turn the end of the pear to shape, refining the overall diameter to 65mm and shaping a nice little dimple on the 'bud' end.
3)...then rough out the thinner end of the pear and use a parting tool to mark 30mm diameter. The finished diameter will be a few mm less, so this allows for refining the shape and getting a good finish.
4)...once I'm happy with the shape, I then sand, oil and buff the pear, before removing it from the scroll chuck.
5)...next I place the jig into the scroll chuck, slide the pear into it using the revolving centre to help to centre it, and tighten the hose clip. At this point I should point out that I have since cut the tails of the hose clips as short as I possibly can, and (thanks John BHT for the advice) I always set up the jig with the tails trailing
6)...now I turn away the old chuck tenon and reduce the thickness of the pear to form the stalk, usually about 15mm back from the end.
7)...finally, I remove the tailstock, cut about 3mm off the end of the stalk to remove the mark where the revolving centre has been, and refine the shape of the stalk, sand, oil and buff before removing from the jig. The spigot inside the jig holds the pear centrally, as long as turning is done gently....mine hasn't slipped once in use.
8]...the next day the fruit gets a second coat of oil and a buffing on a wheel on the lathe.
The critical thing for me is that I can make the pear only 5mm shorter than the original blank of timber. Apples wouldn't be quite so frugal to turn, but would not waste more than about 20mm overall. Not bad!
Les
I will probably batch-turn these, which will save a little time by reducing the number of times
