good morning gentlemen!...a couple of comments on templates and copying... we do quite a bit of multiples in our shop, mostly 4, 6, and 8...extremely rare if we do more than that of any one piece... over the years we have tried and used a few different types of copiers, all on our lathe, not the legacy... beginning with a sears copier that is very much like the shop smith setup... we found this to be somewhat advantageous, as you could position the cutter/follower in different orientations to get into "nooks" and "crannies", so to speak... we even would change the profile of the cutter and follower to a pointed shape(rather than the rounded shape) to clean up all the "steps", rather than using a turning chisel after the copying was done... the advantage to doing this copy work on a lathe is the speed you could run the spindle/work, and thus finish with a very clean piece needing very little sanding... the disadvantage was that it could(and did!) get to be a bit dangerous at times, depending on what type of wood you were working with, what profile you were trying to do, etc....also. having to remove the copier and reattach it numerous times, was a bit awkward and tedious...we then switched to the vega copier, for several reasons...first, we were able to get it 10 ft. long to suit our lathe and our jobs(mostly bed posts)...second, it was of the type that works as a sliding carriage which, once mounted, is very rigid... one hand moves the carriage left and right, the other moves the cutter in and out... with very little practice, excellent results can be achieved, and it was very safe to operate...third was the fact that we could mount the copier on the backside of the lathe permanently, without it effecting the capacity of the what the lathe could turn in regards to diameter...so we would do a copy, and without turning off the machine, go to the front and immediately do any touch ups with our turning chisels...when copying spindles, finials, etc. on the legacy, you need a long cutter to extend down from the router collet, to be able to reach down to the center line ( 3 o'clock or 9 o'clock position)...probably the smallest you would want to go is a 3/8 in. diameter bit, and even then, that diameter could be dangerous...1/2 in. is the safest way to go... and getting into details of a piece with that diameter bit is impossible... cleaning up the details with different router bits is also tedious, but if time is not a factor, certainly doable on the legacy...in regards to templates, our approach was if we needed a thin, flat pattern of what we were making, we simply cut a "slice" from the first piece that we made by hand(no template) on the lathe...this slice was cut from the center of the turning we made, usually 3/8 in to 1/2 in thick... yes, it did "ruin" our first, hand-turned piece, but we were keeping that piece anyway, for our template "library", and the cost factor was calculated into the job's estimate...these "flat" templates were used mostly for milling work into a piece after it was turned, as our vega duplicator could copy from a fully turned piece, and the piece was sliced after the turning work was done...we found this method to be fast and accurate, rather than make a template from plastic or wood...joe b.
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