Making Plastic Washers using my Lathe

I like to use plastic washers between wood parts that rotate relative to each other.  There are many available to purchase, but sometimes a thinner one or odd size is needed that isn't available.  For those times I use this strategy to make my own from plastic scraps easily found in most homes.  Plastic milk jugs, plastic CD or DVD cases, or other plastic packaging can be used. 

For my current needs I have roughly 1/32" (0.03125") of space between parts. I found a DVD case with a soft plastic cover that measured 0.0355" thick. This comes close and should work.  

First step was to make holes for the bolts.  Drilling into thin plastic sheets is problematic.  In this case I used a 1/4"d hole punch to make the center holes. 

First Punched Hole

To mark where to punch I put a strip of masking tape on the plastic, and marked out where I wanted each hole to be.

Row of  Holes

Second step was to cut the sheet into squares with a hole in the middle of each.  My rather dull kitchen scissors made quick work of this task. 

Squares with Holes

A threaded bolt, two hex nuts, and two steel washers with the plastic squares clamped between is all that is needed.  

Between two Nuts/Washers

Then a trip to my hobby lathe. 

On my Lathe

A drill chuck to hold the shaft of the bolt, and a few seconds to turn the plastic stack into round washers. 

Lathe Done

Once done on the lathe, the washers were removed from the bolt and tape was peeled off. 

Plastic Washers

I only needed four on my current project, but it only took a few seconds more to make eight.  That leaves four more I know I'll use up eventually on a future project. 

If you have a drill press but not a lathe, the drill press can also be used to spin and trim the squares down to nice round washers. 

I've used this strategy several times in the past, for my projects as well as for student projects. The secret is to make sure the center holes are snug on the bolt shaft, and that they are clamped tight together between metal washers and nuts on both sides.   

4D 

Replacement Trim made with my CNC

 

Pine Trim

A friend need a little trim to replace some that had rotted on her house. She sent a photo which got me close to the profile shape, but an actual section of the trim finalized the vector shape needed to cut it out using my CNC.  

End View 

The angled top and bottom edges I cut using my table saw after the CNC was done with the curved face on the right side.

She could find no commercial source that wanted to make such a small amount of what is apparently a no-longer made trim shape.  I had a pine board with fairly straight grain that was thick enough to cut the trim from. I cut the two strip shapes on one board, then separated them using my table saw.  

A quick job.  It was fairly easy to make the needed vector outline.  The CNC using a file created with the Moulding toolpath in Aspire had no trouble cutting the extruded shapes. 

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