turning with your eyes
john Lucas
I was laying in bed and couldn't sleep because my mind was going 100 mph which is not uncommon for me. I got to thinking about how I turn. One of the differences between new turners and experienced turners is that we use very subtle movements to control the tool. Sometimes it's a very small almost minute adjustment of the tool that makes all the difference in how it cuts.
So I was thinking about this and realize that i turn with my eyes, not my hands. Well obviously your hands do the work but when your sneaking up on a cut you stare at the edge that's going to be doing the cutting and you say to your self I just need to rotate the tool a hair to pick up that cut. You move the tool and watch the edge and your eyes tell you when your hands rotate it enough to make the cut.
I think it's a lot like surgeons who use the robots to do the work. They are watching a magnified monitor and their eyes are telling their hands to move in incredibly small increments to move that tool just a few thousandths of an inch. I noticed the same thing when I was turning my ultra miniature goblets looking through a 20 power microscope. My smallest goblet was only about .010" wide which meant to turn the bottom of the goblet bowl you were rolling a bead that was about .005" going down to the stem. My hands were able to move in increments that small because my eyes were telling me what to do. Just to give a comparison so you know what I'm talking about my smallest goblet is .023" which is about the size of the period at the end of this sentence.
When turning forms generally you watch the form instead of the tool. I may be cutting on the side closest to me but I'm watching the shape on the backside and my eye is telling my hands what to do to continue that shape as the tool moves along. That only comes from experience and the more practice you have the better you are. That's why I'm a big fan of spindle turning. It teaches you to do all these shapes more or less in miniature compared to bowls and hollow vessels. So when you can do those smaller shapes well you have learned the coordination between eye and hand that helps you do the larger shapes.
Does that make sense to you. I hope so. Obviously sharp tools are a must to be able to pick up a cut with these incredibly tiny movements so it's well worth practicing to sharpen and to do it often.
John, here is the tip of my "practice finial" I posted below, the dime shows the scale. In the image, the dime seems magnified about 5 times normal size. The tip was turned only, no sanding, so sharp tools are a must. The reason I'm posting this is to show the importance of practice; you cannot just decide to turn small items, it takes much practice, and the fine motor skills required to turn this small. Only with magnification can you see the defects in the details.
I'm having fun with this....here is a dime, still shown a bit bigger than it is, compared with the magnified image.
