I have some experience with bowls, and am reasonably comfortable with them.
Today I tried my first spindle; a baseball bat for my son out of a large branch someone left in the street. I can't get my spindle gouge to do much of anything other than scrape. I am having better luck with a bowl gouge, but only occasionally. I presume the problem is that the spindle is a much smaller diameter than a bowl, so catching it at the right angle isn't the same. Any suggestions for making the transition?
A spindle roughing gouge would work best for what you are trying to do. After you have the bat roughly shaped with the roughing gouge, switch to a skew chisel. If you don't have a roughing gouge and can't handle a skew chisel properly, then try a round nose scraper.
When I first started turning many years ago, I found a round nose scraper a very friendly tool. It doesn't always leave the perfect surface finish and you'll have to do more sanding, but it will allow you to get the job done. If you don't have a scraper, find an old leaf spring and grind one end round then grind a bevel with an angle of about 80 degrees. Use the scraper with the handle up a bit, because you are cutting with the burr that is turned up when you grind the scraper. The burr doesn't last very long, so you will have to regrind often. An even more friendly scraper is one with a negative rake (this is a second bevel ground on the top of the scraper, just a slight slope to the cutting edge).
Good luck, spindle turning is actually more difficult than faceplate turning (aka bowl turning).
I don't do much spindle turning either, but I have found that the angle of the tool needs to be pretty dramatically different than when I am turning a bowl. When bowl turning, I usually keep the gouge at or near perpendicular to the ways and adjust the cut vs. scrape by raising and lowering the handle.
To shear with spindles, I've often found it helpful to turn the flute towards me, and hold the tool at almost 45* to the ways. Couldn't tell you exactly why that is offhand, but it works well enough.
They haven't done us any favors with those cylindrical gouges, regardless what they name 'em, that's for sure. You're either compensating by drawing an edge back for a fingernail and losing tool support to cut at a weird angle, or cutting with a narrow portion of the nose. It's that, or the heel gets in the way because of the variable thickness. They're fine for small work where you're doing a lot of rolling (or a bowl), but not so good at planing.
Fred's right on with the business of the roughing gouge. It'll do about the whole bat, and a lot easier than the small stuff, because the thickness is uniform and the bevel angle ditto. Mine's got a U shape with a generous nearly vertical portion, so he's my planing chisel too.
Until you get one, or better yet, some like these,
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get close with the gouges you have and plane with your skew or a chisel - the traditional bodger's tools for straight spindles. Some old fat guy peeling downhill with a forged pattern one at
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to give you an idea of how well you can support and control a good gouge.
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