I made a bunch (20) of ramrods this fall out of a black locust log. Locust is a little tough on tools but I have experimented with trying to use it as a polishing medium with no luck. Even with very heavy pressure and lots of time, I was not able to mark a rifle barrel with locust. I’m going to use them. I started by quartering the log then splitting out one inch squares. The log was green and that’s about as small as I could split them without spoiling anything. I picked a smoothish side and marked a parralell line at 3/4 of an inch. Bandsaw to this line and do the same to the other flat. I now have a crooked 3/4” square stick just under five feet long. Band saw the corners off to get eight sides, Then using a half inch drill, I run each stick through a 3/4” threading die. Now I have a bunch of crooked threaded sticks. The magic is in the table saw jig, which is a 2x3 three feet long. I drilled a 3/4” hole about half way through at an angle and then finished the hole clear through with a 3/8” drill.
Clamp the 2x3 to the top of your table saw so that the saw intersects the hole just before the hole changes to the smaller diameter. Now turn the saw on and raise the blade until you can see it approach the edge of the small hole. With the saw running feed one of the rough sticks into the jig and rotate it. As the stick enters the small hole it may rattle or chatter. If so lower the blade a bit. If the stick is too tight and gets stuck, raise the blade a tiny bit. This hand trial should give you a rough threaded stick with a nicely centered and pretty smooth “tennon” on the end. If the finish measurement is within your needs. run all of the sticks through slowly with a drill. when you are about half way through you will hit the table saw with the drill. Simply open the chuck and walk around the saw to grab the finished end with the drill and pull the rest of the ramrod through. the finish is dependent on the saw blade the feed speed and probably the angle of the guide hole, but none of my ramrods showed a transition where I reversed the drill and were very uniform and smooth. I bundled the ramrods in groups of six around a 3/8” brass rod and tightly seized them up with tie wraps to dry.By adjusting the diameters of the two holes, you can easily reduce the diameter of a finished ramrod for small bores or for roughing out tapers. Thank Heaven my mother didn't have these things when I was a kid, She would have whooped the tar out of us with them.Clint
