My Home Made Hollow Rig

Wayne Bower

Member
Messages
854
Location
Des Moines, IA
This is my homemade hollowing rig. The shaft is 1/2" square steel, the outrigger is 1/2" steel also. The tip is a 3/16 tool steel cutter and the scraper is a section of grade 8 bolt. The high strength bolts make pretty good cutters. The handle is oak, 24” long, drilled in from the back end approximately 6” and filled with lead shot.
The laser mount needs to be out of heavier stock as the vibration from cutting makes it jiggle a little.
The rig works pretty well as long as I don’t get too far over the rest as the vibrations get your attention.
I think that I will probably re-build with a 5/8” or 3/4" round stock for the shaft. That should help reduce the vibration when reaching farther over the shaft. I may eventually make a capture rig for the back end.
I have posted some of the hollow forms that I have done with this rig in a post on lathe projects.
Anyway, comments are welcome.
 

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Wayne, great job!:thumb:

BTW, I think it was Vaughn who suggested this, when I made my hollowing rig, but you need a counter weight to really reduce the laser from bobbing around too much...........

wayne_hollowing_rig.jpg
.. if that makes sense.
The two dimensions, "A" and "B" should be the same length, and the counter weight (yellow block on the right) should be the same weight as the block with the laser.

Cheers!
 
Wayne, looks very good. And I know from my own experience how nice it is to work with a hollowing rig.
Great job.
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That looks great, Wayne. I really like the articulating cutter assembly.

To expand a bit on what Stu mentioned, the rig I use has the battery pack separate from the laser emitter, and it's at the back end of the bar that holds the laser. It ends up being a counterbalance, although on mine it's usually not possible to hang the back part off the supporting bar as far as Stu's drawing. For yours, you could use just about anything for a counterbalance (in place of the batteries) as long as you have some bar length to attach it to.
 
Wayne,

A counter balance will help you greatly. You might want to cut down on the weight out on the end of the laser. The least amount of weight you have out there, the less the vibration. Plus you must keep the laser perpendicular to the lathe ways; this will allow for the correct reading of your laser. I like you out rigger. Looks good.
 
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