I
like to decorate plain wood plates so I make them to hang easily on the
wall. To accomplish this I cut a groove in the bottom of the plate
using a parting tool. You can see part of the plate with the groove in
it in the picture at left. This groove then becomes an easy way to hold
the plate using the expanding collet type chuck that I built. To make
the chuck I turned a bowl from hardwood. Drilled holes aroung the outer
inside edge of the bowl. Each hole has a nail in it. The circle of
nails is forced outwards when the plate that fits inside the ring of
nails is pulled towards the headstock by tightening the thumbscrew on
the threaded rod. (This will work only on hollow shaft lathes) Be sure
to make the plate slightly larger than the circle of nails. The heads
of the nails stops them from being pulled through and they cannot fall
out because the faceplate sits against the heads. A recess groove had
to be made to accomodate the nailheads. The groove in the back of the
plate has to be cut accurately since the nails do not have a great deal
of movement but I have not had a plate come off this device yet.
I
suppose if you have a screw chuck you could adapt something to fit a
groove in the bottom of plates too. But I made this before I acquired a
screw chuck, so I used this for all kinds of turnings.
