Basswood

Wet and soft wood is a double task. Answer is to present a sharpened edge properly. Scraping is suicide, as are angles which provide a short portion of the edge across the fibers. I have best luck using large-radius gouges, and yes, this includes roughing gouges on the outside, because they allow more edge in the cut to slide the wood along, allowing it to sever itself. It's the same as in carving, little forward and downward pressure, and sliding sideways produces the cleanest cut. With the lathe doing the sliding for us, we only have to do the A-B-C so that it cuts, rather than scrapes and tears.

Of course, things will improve once the wood is dry, so it's not as important if you're going to turn later for circular.

Then there's that old paradox of how lacquer and CA, both harder than the wood fibers, are lumped with a lubricant which is not.

Bill,

I've never turned green basswood, but from your description it sounds very much like turning green ash. My advice would be, get your bowl shape the way you want it. trying to avoid too much tearout by avoiding scrapers and keeping your gouge sharp. Then, when you get to the shape you want, get your gouge razor sharp, either off the grinder or give it a hone or whatever you do to sharpen it.

When you've got it the best you can get it, present it to the wood at a 90 degree angle, so you are taking a shear cut, and the tearout and nasty, long fibers will be sheared off clean as a whistle.

I just turned some storm-downed ash the other day like that, and the stuff was so wet the sap was slinging everywhere. On my last pass, I did a shear cut and the finish is no worse than 220 grit would do. Perhaps a bit better.

I suspect the basswood may turn something like some wet buckeye I had a few weeks ago. I couldn't get a clean cut with a freshly ground and honed bowl gouge. I finally got it rough turned, then let it dry a bit before I did the finishing cuts. I did a lot of power sanding too.

Barry

Might need to be dry- basswood was the first thing I tried turning, and it worked really nicely on the lathe, though I was using kiln-dried 8/4 stock. Not sure if it is worth the effort visually, though- that's an awfully bland wood.