Safest Method?

Safest? Hand plane. But I'd just mount them up and take off the excess w/a roughing gouge, and not bother to trim them at all.

If I was to trim them, I'd proably do i ton the table saw. If you're not comfortable doing that, the band saw would be my next choice.

Safe how? Not cutting you fingers off safe, or not ruining your blanks safe?

In the speedy but watch your fingers category, set up the tablesaw and rip them into octagons. Given the timesavings on the lathe, this is actually worth doing often enough, but you have to be able to use a push-stick and set up tablesaw for it to be safe for you.

Jointer can also work and eat fingers, but is slower.

Safer for fingers - use a hand plane. Drawknife also works, but you can split the blank if it has grain running the wrong way (or you cut the wrong way, more like.) If clumsy you can also cut yourself with a drawknife.

Build a router sled over the lathe and rough in with that.

Belt sand the corners off (but that involves dust and perhaps dulling your gouges with grit on the wood, and it's slow.)

...or throw them on the lathe and use a roughing gouge....

A band saw.

But why bother? It's so small anyway, just use a roughing gouge -- that's what they're designed for.

IMHO, on something as small as 2x2, the only way is on the lathe.. A roughing gouge will round a 12" blank in a few minutes.. A carbide tool in seconds.. My favorite roughing tool is the Bowl Pro:

Looking at the bowl pro, and some others, the business end looks like a standard segmented planer knife that is on my grizzly planer. Looks like a fun project to make one of those with one of my spare inserts. I like the carbide idea, should last a while...

or

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1. beware of large roughing gouges - they take dramatically more skill than a 1/2 or 3/4 inch gouge and can easily catch - just use a 1/2 inch spindle gouge - for little blanks like that, if it takes you 30 seconds to round them off with a 1/2 inch gouge you aren't doing it right
2. suggest you eschew carbide - it's not needed, it's brittle and it doesn't take the type of edge you need for wood - use it if there is a lot of grit or metal in the wood and you have to do a lot of cutting, but otherwise just use HSS

There is a lot of truth in the last statement.

I'm a wood and metal lathe guy and have a metal mill.

I can make most anything I want.

HSS is sharper and will cut like a knife edge.

Carbide is a more blunt edge - has radius and is intended for loaded conditions.

The important thing about them is they will cut the so called Rose woods of Central America - those loaded with silicon and we have them up here in North America as well.

Any wood that dulls HSS carbide is good. There are M2, M42 (42 tougher!) and a number of other HSS. So if your regular skew fails, switch to M2 or M42 skew first.

I like the 'indexable' inserts that are square, triangle, long triangle, rounds and such. But have only used M42 so far on wood.

Mart> >>> >>>

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Or you could buy some 2.75 in. oak dowels. Just kidding, Jack.

Best, Arch

Somebody had to say it. Thanks, Arch!

LD

You do leave some metals out of the list, but the only maker of M42 tools I know is Dave (D-way tools)

????? you mean kennemetal, valenite, and so on don't make M42?

to follow up, here are some sources for M42:

there are many thousands more sources listed. Not one of the sources I found was d-way.

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I think this is the first time I've disagreed with you, Bill! The inserts (bought in a 10 pack) are $4 each and I've acently cut through nails and barb wire with them and had to rotate them where my bowl gouge would need reshaping.. I've spent years trying to perfect my sharpening and I can't get an edge half as sharp as the carbide inserts..

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very interesting - with a sharp HSS tool, I can get a fine finish that needs little sanding, and with a 5/8 bowl gouge, I can peel out shavings that are, well 5/8 wide by about 1/4 inch thick from wet wood before I run out of lathe horsepower - they come out steaming - I can't do that with carbide, I get tearout and poor finish. I do use carbide on my metal lathe and mill, but even there I need to be careful that it is sharp enough if I want a decent finish - I've made the comparison and my results differ. And, yes, I've cut through nails with a bowl gouge, and before I got my metal lathe, I used HSS gouge to cut steel and aluminum with no problems (just had to keep speed down) - of course not with the precision of a metal lathe, but it works - in fact if I want to shape an elegant finial out of aluminum, I use a fingernail grind bowl gouge and hold a boring bar in the cross-slide as a tool rest

I don't think that was his claim. I think his claim was about the sources HE WAS AWARE OF that made M42 TOOLS (and from the context, I assumed he meant turning tools for a wood lathe.) The sources you provided do not appear to offer such tools.

Alexy, correct (Dave is a retired machinist )

Mac, I agree carbide is changing turning.

I rough with an EasyRougher now, the finish is terrible. But it takes the bowl to round, with less pain and strain then even my largest bowl gouge.

I recently bought a set of carbide tipped tools from Penn State (small gouge, skew and parting tool). My wife uses these and I have found then leave a good finish and I don't have to sharpen them as often as my HSS (since she doesn't sharpen)

I wonder if this is the same discussion that happened when HSS was being introduced to replace HCS