Easy Segmentation
From the very first day I had a lathe I wanted to try my hand at segmented turnings. These projects can be quite intimidating. For some pieces you must cut hundreds of segments just right before you can ever hope to glue up a piece for turning.
There are several good articles I have found that help you with layout and technique. Kevin’s Woodturnings is one site that really helped me! but I still struggled with the math and figuring out how big to cut each piece.
Here is a tool that should help you, it certainly helped me. I have created an excel spreadsheet that has a separate page for both open and closed segmented turnings. Each page has columns for the nuber of segments in the finished ring. From there the calculations do the rest.
As an example, for an 8 segmented closed circle you would need each division to be 45 degrees. Since you are cutting two pieces to be glued making this 45 degree angle each piece being joined would be cut at 22.5 degree. Simple enough so far….
Next you simply look down the chart to find the radius of the circle you want to make. If it is a 5″ radius, meaning you want a 10″ wide ring, the outer most edge of the segments would need to be cut 4-2/16″ wide.
Cut 8 pie shaped pieces with this dimension and you will be able to glue up a 10″ 8-sided ring.
There you go… have fun, experiment…. but please give me feedback! Let me know if it works, send me a picture of your piece. I’d love to have an example or two to present in my site!
To download the excel file, Click Here segment-turning-math
