Finishing Turntable

In a recent issue of the Highland Woodturner, Curtis Turner (what are the odds?) showed how to make a simple spray painting turntable out of MDF and some dowels. I thought, “hmm, that would beat the heck out of some nails pounded into a board that I usually end up cobbling together whenever I need something like that.” Plus I figured I had an extra lazy Susan bearing I had purchased for my tablet holder which I didn’t end up using.

I started by tracing 8″ and 12″ circles on some scrap MDF with a compass, I chose these two dimensions based on the size of the scrap I had available. Then on the 12″ circle, I drew concentric circles of 10″, 8″, 6″, etc to aid in placing the holes. To finish locating the holes, I drew two perpendicular lines through the center. Later, when I figured I needed more holes, I drew more lines at 45°.

I cut the circles out on the scrollsaw with a pretty coarse blade (5 or 7 tpi), then I ended up making a jig for my oscillating sander to sand the blanks into perfect circles.I had planned on using a lazy Susan bearing, but I found that the top circle spun freely on top of the bottom one with only a 1/4″ dowel for an axle.

I set the depth stop on the drill press to 3/8″ and preceded to drill all the holes I had marked. I didn’t want drill all the way through the top, because I didn’t want any paint or finish running between the two discs and ruining the spinning action. Finally, after a few minutes of thought, I figured out that I could use a pencil sharpener to point the dowels, rather than figure out some more complicated way.