No, I was gonna have them stabilized but just for the heck of it I thought I would try to turn them w/o. I turned them on a Sherline metal lathe and turned them like they were metal -- small cuts. I first center bored the squares with a spur bit --feeding easy and clearing the chips frequently, clipped the corners a bit on a shaper table and turned them on a mandrel made from a 5/16 -24 threaded rod shimmed w/ one turn of masking tape. I double nutted the ends and mounted it between a 3 jaw chuck and dead center. I used a HSS metal cutting bit and never cut more than 0.010 each pass, feeding slowly. The fact that it worked may be proof that it is more important to be lucky than it is to be good. I suspect that if I ahd tried to turn them with hand held tools I would have not been able to cut so gently and probably would have shattered them all to blazes. They look rather nice if I may say so, a few voids and pitts which some folks might not like but I think add a lot of character. I am hoping that multiple thin coats of urethane varnish will level out the voids, and so far it seems to be working. The whole process is slow but heck I am only doing this for my personal entertainment -- so why not?
AgMD