Loading ...I spent some time this weekend organizing my workshop. It often feels like I spend more time organizing my workshop than I do working on stuff. A big part of the problem is I keep on buying stuff and then I have to find a home for it in an already crowded space. A smart person might realize this and quit buying stuff, I prefer to spend my weekends trying to find a place to put it all 
Something that has been bugging me for a while is where and how to store my donut chuck. I use it often so it needs to be close to the lathe, but at just under 16″ diameter and consisting of a couple pieces 3/4″ plywood along with a heavy dedicated face plate, it is fairly bulky and heavy. Inspiration struck me and I decided to hang it on the wall behind my lathe using a threaded wooden dowel. The following post shows how I threaded the dowel with 1 1/4″ x 8 threads to match those on the face plate. Thanks to Al Hockenbery for the advice he gave me on the AAW forum.
The first step was to measure the large diameter of the threads on my lathe. Strangely enough that came to 1 1/4″. Who would have guessed that! Now I know why it is called a 1 1/4″ x 8 thread!
I then rounded a piece of scrap wood between centersto the same diameter, tapering one end slightly.
Then, using the faceplate that I had dedicated to my donut chuck, I cut threads in the dowel. Tapering the end of the dowel helped a lot in getting the threads started. I also found that reducing the overall diameter of the dowel from 1 1/4″ helped as well. Once I had done this, screwing the dowel into the face plate and cutting the threads, was a lot easier. Making the dowel about 8 to 10″ long also helped as it gave me a decent place to grip with both hands. The threads did not look as good as those on a metal bolt, nor were they as deep, but they worked just fine.
Once that was done I mounted the dowel in a chuck and predrilled a hole for the screw that was going to be used to attach the dowel to the plywood.
Measured to length and parted the dowel off.
Not trusting the holding power of a screw into plywood, I put some wood glue on the back of the dowel before screwing it to the plywood partition. I was concerned that when I unscrewed the donut chuck from it’s new resting place, that the screw holding the dowel on would unscrew from the plywood. Here is a shot of the threaded dowel mounted.
A shot of the donut chuck screwed onto the dowel. I made the dowel about 2 1/2″ long, giving me room to hang the front section of the donut chuck on the dowel as well.
Excited with my new threading abilities, I made some more threaded dowels, and decorated the wall with my sanding disc and my vacuum chucks as well. I was surprised how well the wooden face plates on the vacuum chucks threaded onto the wooden threaded dowel. They actually threaded on easier than the metal faceplate on the back of the donut chuck. I did find that a dab of paste wax on the threads helped lubricate them.
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Keith – this is one of those really cool ideas you should submit to a bunch of magazines!!!
Thanks Elizabeth
I am thinking that “eventually,” you are going to need to build yourself a workshop. They can progress slowly, as I am personally witness to (snicker) and still be usable as well as a work in progress. Do you have room in your back yard?
That would be a dream come true Kelly! I’ll probably have to work on the bigger back yard first though!