Making Spinning Tops

The spinning top journey has been a fun one! They are now stocked in the shoppe if you’d like to pick one up, and I have a video ready all about the process thus far.

When we first started playing around with the idea of making the tops, the project was centered around just that. Making different designs, cutting in different woods etc… Since then, we’ve tried out a lot of different concepts, ventured into making dishes and perfectly sized keepsake boxes,

The process of making the tops themselves have also gone into quite a lot different directions. In terms of software I use Aspire by Vectric whenever I use the CNC. This has been great in my experience both from cutting flat things on the cnc table as well as using the rotary. However, when you design round things, there is a little bit of a learning curve and you have to think about the design in a slightly different way. Imagine you roll a piece of paper up into a cylinder. Now let's unroll that cylinder and we have a rectangle. That rectangle is what you need to design in order to actually cut something round.

In many ways, it's all about what kind of profile you want to create. The smallest change in angle or curve will create massive changes in the final project. I think one of my favorite parts of this software is how you can model designs before even cutting, so you can play with different changes and then see how it will end up looking in reality, without starting to even cut.

So it's nice to be able to test out ideas without having to actually go through the process of cutting them every time, just to get an idea of what they'll look like. Of course, in the end, there's nothing like actually cutting the piece in order to get a sense for if you like the design or not, and if it feels good in the hand.

In terms of making these, at first it started with using primarily the CNC. However, while the rotary is great for a lot of things, the one thing it doesn't do is spin really fast like a traditional lathe. So when it became time to shape the top that you hold on to (which can't really be cut too much on the CNC because then it breaks), we went through different options. My first idea was to simply hand carve each one by hand, however it's hard to get a very clean look and they're not consistent either. Next up we mounted each top in the drill in order to spin it to sand it and try to shape it. In the end we realized, the traditional lathe would probably be the best choice here. Now the lathe is great because you can mount the top very securely in the chuck, and you have a lot of control when sanding and shaping.

Once we started using the lathe however, we also realized that the order of mount the lathe properly, the best idea would be to first cut a round side on the blank on the lathe before mounting it onto the rotary on the cnc. Then you cut it on the CNC, and then put it back on the lathe, using the same rounded side that chucks up nicely in order to give you a lot of control.

Now we have a new Grizzly benchtop lathe for this purpose in the shop. It's got a new stand (which will be a project video coming out soon), and I think we're getting the process down pretty good of making these tops quite nicely.

Oh – another thing, after putting some tape on the tops to try to get a better grip when you spin, I figured that it might not be a bad idea to dip the handle part in paint. It seems to provide a better grip to get a good spin going, and it looks quite nice too!