round??

[Alice in Wonderland]

I am having a problem making things round, I have had plates and gadgets to help and still I turn out odd shapes of rounds , does anybody else have problems and has found a trick???
Thanks for any suggestions and help
Alice

[Mitchell]

Flat round or spherical round? Specifically, what are you trying to make that appears round?

[Alice in Wonderland]

I am making an abstract sculpture and the addition to it are a few round balls in spalted wood , the spalted wood is not a good choice to begin with since it tends to be soft on spots but it is the effect I want ,BUT to get those balls perfect round???? this is where I have the problem,
thanks for trying to help me
Alice

[AlArchie]

Alice, I've used this method for getting "round" pieces round, in the past,and have just finished a sort of "egg shaped" handle for a walking stick.

1. Whittle that darn thing as close as you can to a sphere shape.

2. Assuming you have a small belt sander, turn it belt side up and hold it in a vice. If you have a table model or floor model, better yet.

3. Now, start the sander up and holding the ball very loosely between all four fingers and thumb, place the ball onto the moving belt and let it rotate in your fingers. Move the ball around in a circular motion, and eventually it will smooth itself into an almost perfect sphere.

I think this is similar to centerless machine grinding and takes a bit of practice, but it works!

PS Keep your fingers above the belt surface!

Al

[Hi_Ho_Sliver]

take a look at the sander on my picturetrail site that I put together for sanding walking sticks...the foam rubber behind the sandpaper tube allow some give which makes it easier to sand in the round

[Mitchell]

An option is to find a ring with the hole being the same size as the sphere that you want to carve - or at least relatively close. You can use the hole to judge where to remove wood. In other words, the ring helps give you a visual reference to view your sphere against.

Back in the day when golf balls were wound (rubber band 'guts'), some golfers used such a device to judge if the golf ball was still "round".

[dryheat]

I haven’t done it very many times but the times when I needed to carve something into a reasonable shape of a sphere I did this. Cut to a cube the size of sphere needed and mark the center line on all faces. Then I draw a line equal to a little less than a third of the face on all sides. This leaves a square on each corner which I carve off and I keep carving toward the center line of each side eyeballing it for symmetry. The sanding thing works too but I usually prefer stuff to look carved. Hope this helps.

[Alice in Wonderland]

hi to all and thank you so much for giving me all those good hints, well my husband tells me "you can not even get a straight line and round is not much better":-) :-) maybe I will suprise him with my next piece of wood.
Thanks again
Alice