Where are all the faceplates!

Sooo, we came in to turn bowls this evening and there are no faceplates available. We did see a few attached to bowls in progress that were on the shelves or sitting on the floor out in the work area. We switched to making pens during this time hoping that those who were using the faceplates would either finish their projects or take them off so that others could use them, but alas no one came in to do that.

By shelves do you mean the ones inside the woodshop? Unless something has changed that’s not personal storage anyway, it is free use wood and occasionally committee storage if waiting for a part to finish up repairing something. A pretty good rule of thumb is if there isn’t a note on the tool and it belongs to DMS give it 15 minutes then feel free to use it. I don’t turn bowls but afaik the whole point of faceplates are to be removable so no one should be tying them up for any length of time if they aren’t actively being used anyways.

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When using a face plate it is required that the plate remain attached to the stock until work is completed. Depending on the process being used it could take several days to complete work.

With that in mind, knowing that DMS only has a few face plates I don’t believe it’s unreasonable for those making projects that require extended periods of non use to purchase their own face plate.

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I think it would be difficult to define “extended periods of non-use”. In this case, just a few hours of non-use prevented someone else from making a project.

Since many members are only available to work on their projects on weekends, a typical project might have a faceplate tied up for two consecutive weekends.

1" /8TPI faceplates are only $20 to $40. Maybe the Woodshop committee would vote to buy a couple more …

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I would define extended period to be anytime you remove the work from the lathe.

As for DMS buying a couple more, how many is a couple more? I guarantee that no matter how many they buy they will always be 2 short of the requirement.

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I suppose - faceplates will be like clamps. Can’t have enough.

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Those we saw were outside of the wood shop. We shall buy our own.

Or if you plan to make bowls regularly just buy your own. I just bought a 2nd one for my home shop at about $20 on amazon so I could do this very thing, chuck up then finish when I have time later.

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I think the personal storage storing issue of face plates and chucks should be defined at the next wood shop committee meeting. Then the meetings notes posted on talk so everyone is in the loop. Can someone get this on Woodshop agenda?

I also have had in the past has issues finding a face plate only to see them sitting on a bowl on someones personal storage shelf. I could be wrong but I though they were to be returned to the cabinet for the lath you have been working on after you turn off the lathe and cleanup, and they were not suppose to leave the lathe area?
Is a sign needed at the lathes?

I often have to buy the stuff that I need, and have racked up a lot of purchases for stuff I randomly use. It would be much nicer to have things like this available at DMS rather than having to buy one more thing.

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@Team_Woodshop

Again, not a bowl turner yet so bear with me, if you retain the screws used to mount the face plate and use the same one after removing it from the piece at a later date it throws everything off kilter enough to matter? I guess that makes sense on some level with wet wood but doesn’t to me on kiln dried.

I don’t see more faceplates being a fix, the problem stays the same unless the space buys an exorbitant amount of them. I feel like the cleanest option unfortunately would be to not provide them for use. Have one or two for demo classes in the committee cabinet for that use only because it doesn’t seem feasible to me to police them consistently. I hate that option though

Speaking of a committee cabinet, I’m thinking we need one for WoodTurning. As it is we have stuff scattered in several places and it might be a good idea to consolidate to a lockable cabinet for certain items, as this thread is sorta touching on. Plus teachers materials could be housed in there which I would prefer.

To answer your questions @Nate, any time you remove something from a chuck or faceplate, your run the risk of losing your center. It’s more common and noticeable with a jaw chuck, and less noticeable with a faceplate (maybe 1/8th of an inch max with a plate in my experience). Most of the cases I’ve seen at the space are folks making very large bowls that can’t be finished in a couple of hours, thus the tool carryover. So would it be ideal to leave your faceplate attached? Yes. Is 1/8th of an inch that huge of a deal when your are dealing with a larger bowl? Not really. So imho, if you’re going to make a bowl large enough to baptize a child in it, and it’s going to take you 8 hrs to make it over 3 sessions, then you can certainly afford to lose 1/8-1/4 of an inch so that you can be polite to others and free up that faceplate.

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buy your own faceplate.

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