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Knowledge You Can Build On — Est. 1998

Combination Press Plough Plane

The worst grind I've ever seen.

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The worst grind I've ever seen.

#1

The worst grind I've ever seen.

john Lucas

Had a friend come over yesterday to get some tips on turning. He's brand new and bought the lathe with tools, chucks etc. Had a Nova live center that had never been out of the box, still had packing grease on it.

He had 2 bowl gouges both 1/4" English gouges with very long blades. wonder why you would make a 1/4" bowl gouge with a blade that long, you can't hang it over the tool rest more than an inch or so. Anyway, both gouges had a U shaped flute and were difficult to sharpen. I think the corner where the U comes into the straight side must have been fairly sharp because you had to really be careful when grinding to not get that little dip in the edge just before you get into the wings. Glen Lucas fussed about this in his sharpening demo saying that's why he preferred the superflute shape. Anyway one of his gouges had a grind that I can't for the life of me figure out why you would grind a tool this way. Looked like devil horns sticking forward of the bottom of the flute. see photo.

The interesting thing is this student didn't want to learn to sharpen. He wanted to know if he could just use carbide tools and never sharpen. He had a Hunter Hercules. he wants to do bowls,boxes and ornaments. I told him he probably could if he bought the Hunter #5 do box bottom and steep sided bowl bottoms, A Hunter ornament hollowing set, and anEZwood tools detailer for the finials. what do you all think. I prefer to sharpen and use cutting tools for most of my work with the Hunters filling in when needed where they specialize.


Re: The worst grind I've ever seen.

#2

Jerry Maske

Re: The worst grind I've ever seen.

Jerry Maske

John,

Just my opinion. You done good with him. We ALL need to learn how to use ALL the tools under as many different settings as possible.

I have a set of EWT and use them when it's appropriate. The finishing tool does a great job on the inside of some bowl shapes. However, I can get in with a bowl gouge or small scraper too, so that's THREE tools to do the same job. And sometimes one really will work better than others.

My point is how would you know that if you didn't know how to use all three?

And as far as sharpening goes, well, you'll not get an argument there from many folks. Your student needs to need an attitude adjustment at your hands and take it a bit slower. Sharpening is a wonderful process. Every time I find things aren't going well, I step over to the grinder, polish the bevel and amaze myself as to how much better the cuts are going.

So get this student to understand that, yes, there's more than one way to do most anything. But the more ways we know, the more likely we'll be to find a way that will work regardless of the situation.

Good luck with this one.

Jerry

Re: The worst grind I've ever seen.

#3

Re: The worst grind I've ever seen.

Roger Chandler

Yeah John....I think that any turner who does not take the time to learn to both sharpen and use the standard turning tools properly, is really limiting themselves in many ways. They will not develop skill sets that enable them to do more complicated pieces, and sharpening is a basic and fundamental skill needed to become good at turning.

I have no idea why people want everything easy, but there is no substitute for a sharp tool, and a repeatable grind. Even the carbide tools dull with usage, and then they must be replaced. I would much rather have the ability to easily refresh that edge than not, and that takes both the investment of time and in equipment......anything else, IMO, is just self defeating!

Re: The worst grind I've ever seen.

#4

Re: The worst grind I've ever seen.

john Lucas

When I taught a class with John Jordan everytime someone in the class would holler hey John (they meant john jordan, not me) he would say sharpen your tool before even hearing the question. His point is, 9 times out of 10 it's because the tool isn't sharp enough.

I guess I come from a flat wood tool side where ultra sharp tools are a joy and even a necessity to use. So I approach my turning tools the same way.

Re: The worst grind I've ever seen.

#5

Re: The worst grind I've ever seen.

john Lucas

OH I did show him how he can use the Hunter Hercules as a bevel rubbing tools to get really clean cuts. Then I showed him how to use the bowl gouges he brought that were freshly sharpened to get a clean cut. I also showed him how to use a round nose scraper that came with his lathe to do a shear cut to improve the cut over the scraping cuts he had been doing. Hopefully he grasped that.

Re: The worst grind I've ever seen.

#6

Re: The worst grind I've ever seen.

Braden

I think he needs to understand scraping vs. slicing. The carbide-tipped cutters are scraping and not slicing. A scraper with a burr on it can be likened to a card scraper which is actually slicing when used optimally. A bowl gouge can be used for either a scraping cut or a slicing cut.

Maybe hours and hours of sanding will give him opportunity to ponder....

Re: The worst grind I've ever seen.

#7

Re: The worst grind I've ever seen.

john Lucas

Well that's why I like the Hunter Hercules. I showed him how to use it as a scraper and then a bevel rubbing slicing tool and then a shear scraper. So if he gets a bad catch learning the bevel rubbing technique he can go back to scraping to clean it up and the shear scraping if he wants to save the project. Each time he tries the bevel rubbing he will get better and more comfortable with it. That will make him feel more comfortable trying spindle and bowl gouges.

He called yesterday to tell me he used the bevel rubbing to clean up the inside and outside a little and then tried shear scraping to clean it up some more. I should see the results tonight at the club meeting so it will be interesting.