Woodturning Vocabulary and Instruction

Re: Uncatchable Bowl Gouge

Keith T

Doc, I agree 100%!! I have students who get repeated catches. Show them how to grind as you describe, and the catches stop. My finish cut on a bowl is with the flute straight up; if your grind doesn't curl in, it will catch constantly. The benefit is a clean cut with little or no tearout.

Re: Uncatchable Bowl Gouge

john lucas

Well I'm obviously going to have to do more experimenting when people like Bill, Doc and Keith all agree. Sharp fellows. I reground a gouge this morning using a homemade version of Michelson grind. I checked it against a real one and mine is dead on as far as all the hole placements. Doing a test sort of like Doc Described there wasn't much difference between my gouge and the one with the Michelson grind. Maybe a little. More practice needed. Would love to spend some time in Doc,Bill or Keith's shop playing with these gouges. We could learn a lot sharing what we have learned.

I find that most catches by beginners are because they lift the tool off the bevel doing a push cut so the nose catches. The other catch they have is starting the cut on the lip of the bowl. Neither one of those will be prevented by this grind I don't think. The other catch is touching the wood before they anchor it on the tool rest. No grind will stop that. When I'm teaching I try to enforce never having the gouge flute straight up. Always tilted in the direction you want to go. If they do this whatever grind is on the wing will have zero affect on their turning.

I do a lot of pull cuts and will be putting the tool to the test on those. In that case I can see where a different grind on the wing will help. For the last 3 months I have been using these same 2 gouges. One has a very short main bevel and the other has the bevel ground all the way down. Both have the heel of the bevel ground off. The difference is surprisingly minor. I turned a wide variety of things, bowls, platters, spindles etc. I could easily hear the difference in pitch when I switched from one to the other. When taking extremely fine cuts with freshly sharpened tools I think I had a better feel for how it was cutting with the small bevel. On the inside of a bowl there was definitely less friction or what seemed like less effort to push the tool on the short bevel. I didn't turn any bowls with a transition area. I would think ,but don't know for sure, that the small bevel would work better.

Re: Woodturning Vocabulary and Instruction

mike mills

What's all the stuff with 10:30 or 2:00?

Please tell me how to instruct a millennial to look at their phone (or digital watch) and understand the different positions to roll the flute to.

Re: Woodturning Vocabulary and Instruction

John K Jordan

>>>What's all the stuff with 10:30 or 2:00?

Please tell me how to instruct a millennial to look at their phone (or digital watch) and understand the different positions to roll the flute to.

Any good teacher would just put a clock on the wall in your shop for the poor student to refer to during the lesson. Problem solved.

Re: Woodturning Vocabulary and Instruction

ebd

A prior discussion on "open flute" and "closed flute" has been very instructive for me. After reading all the comments yet again, I still find "open flute" and "closed flute" very nebulous and unspecific.

Even today, if another turner watching my work suggested I "open" the flute slightly I would have to ask what they meant. I cannot believe that a new turner being mentored would know what was being suggested until the meaning was explained, and that makes me question the educational value of the term and usage.

You seem to have a problem with a very simple concept. Are you trying to learn in a vacuum - with no experienced person helping you or no book on turning? I can't imagine any woodturner just telling someone they are trying to teach “open the flute” without a previous discussion of the tool, it's parts, how it works, and how it catches and showing them what opening and closing the flute means. When I try to help someone learn turning I will often stand behind them and help guide their hands (with the lathe off) to give them a feel for what to do and how it feels.

An equally fundamental concern I have with the idea of only suggesting someone "open" or "close" the flute is that the turner may not be developing an understanding of successful cutting edge presentation, an understanding that SHOULD be extendable to all lathe tools. If all the turner learns is open or close the flute, and next month perhaps in a different bowl the turner is not achieving a successful cut, all he or she has learned is open and close the flute.

I don't think that anyone suggested that open or close the flute is the end all or be all. Additionally, while every tool is somewhat different, cuts somewhat differently, and catches somewhat differently, they all have a fundamental sameness/similarity that flows across essentially all cutting tools. That includes tablesaws, planers, drills, etc. It would seem you are starting way ahead of the learning curve. You need the underlying background knowledge before progressing to the fine points.

It's hard to imagine a discussion about gouge use without the term "flute" but it's only in the last few months, when I was struggling to help another turner, that I stopped to think about the definition. I can't recall ever seeing "flute" defined with text and diagrams, and it's a basic concept used all the time.

I took a quick look through my books on turning. Quite a few had detailed descriptions with very clear diagrams of each tool type (spindle and bowl gouges included, as well as scrapers, skews, etc.) and an explaination of each part and how it is used. I found that they not only defined and described flute but also detailed each part of a flute giving examples of different kinds of flute. The discussion was very complete.

Once more you are complicating a very simple concept. Again, I wonder if you are trying to learn in a vacuum and skipping the basics and getting far too concerned with the esoterics. I suggest a book like Mike Darlow's “Fundamentals of Woodturning”. It's very detailed and complete but simple and he leads you through a complete course of turning. It includes lathes, tools, design, spindle, bowl (including chuck and faceplate holding as well as other techniques), and hollow turning. It's a thorough and very understandable book.

Sight, feel, even smell, and especially sound are critical and fundamental to success at turining. But jumping in without the basic background knowledge and understanding is a formula for frustration. I know from experience. Much of successful turning is counterintuitive - at least to me. One must start at the beginning and have some kind of instruction - book or human.