Goblet Question

Best answer I've found for letting it all hang out has been a steady. Kids got one for me a couple years ago.

Second best is a broad face on the piece to bear on the chuck jaws. A simple groove won't do well, in my experience. Make a face ahead of your tenon as wide as the thickness of your jaw material, and undercut a touch to get the dovetail action wedging the outside firmly. I've got something called "Powergrip" jaws for my Novas which will handle a foot or so of overhang even on chunks of 12" elm. With 50mm dovetail, I'd say limit yourself to maybe 10x4 without a steady.

Without knowing how your bowl gouge is ground, it's difficult to say whether I'd go for that or a fingernailed spindle or detail gouge, which will peel pretty well, with little pressure. Help your case by boring a large hole in the center if you care to, and cutting up and out. I generally don't use one, preferring to get my cutting angle established by boring with the gouge and drawing up and out. With the toolrest tight in, and the cut performed by the increasingly more vertical ground portion on the gouge, you can do remarkably well. Pointy gouges will cut in and out, but can be grabby because their vertical section is pretty wide. In any case, start at 10:00 with the nose, rolling into the cut until you're cutting at 8:45 to 9:00 with the wing.

Scrapers - see the other thread, are great to enlarge an opening, but stink for making one.

A goblet, done correctly, is a difficult project. Maybe you should hone and prefect your technique on something easier to start with.

When you can make a nice bowl or a set of candle sticks, then it is time to revisit the goblet idea.

Just my >>I decided to try turning a goblet. I took the piece of ash and trued it up

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I will often start the center with a drill.... I put a drill chuck in the tail stock, with the largest bit I have and then bore out the center. Then work that hole to the final shape with a combination of the bowl gouge and a scraper

I'm still a newbie, but I do a few things different.. might help or hurt..

After your initial truing between centers and cutting a tenon (I like a fairly deep tenon with a little dovetail) I would have chucked it up as you described, BUT my next step probably would have been to true the piece up again, preferably with the tailstock/live center on the face... IMO, 2 reasons for this... I feel more comfortable doing the hollowing work after the "sides" are true and not causing any wobble, and If the outside isn't true, I don't know how wide to cut the goblet "bowl" and still have enough material on the outside to true it up and sand it.. YMMV

Things might improve after I get more skilled, but I've never had something that was trued between centers chuck up as true again.. always seems to need a pass or 2 to get it trued again..

mac

Please remove splinters before emailing

were you trying to cut near the center or edge? have you already formed the goblet spindle portion (narrow portion where you hold the goblet)? or were you planning on shaping the narrow portion after the inside? what is the planned inside diameter of the goblet? have you considered keeping the tailstock and turning a tenon while you remove the rest of the inside of the goblet, then turning the narrow stem, then removing the tenon inside the goblet? that way you have tail stock support during two phases of the turning and it helps if your tool catches. however, it isn't easy getting your tool into the bowl with the tail stock in place. i'm still a beginner too, but there are guys here willing to give you advice and some of it has really helped me out. Using the above tailstock support method, i have used the gouge facing about

10 o'clock with the bevel against the tenon and cleared out away from the tenon and no catches. then I've worked the opposite way from the outside to the inside facing about 2 or 3 o'clock until i reach the bottom of the part i just cleared out. i get tool vibration doing this, but no catches. then i repeat the process until i get to the bottom of the bowl....then use a scraper for final smoothing/shaping. i don't know if i'm doing it correctly, but it seems to be working and i'm not having to sand very much. i really like having tailstock support, and hate having the tail stock in the way. there's a book, "turning small boxes" that has been very instructive to me. most of it is very technical and too advanced, but it does show some good pictures of how to cut out the insides. most other pictures I've seen have shavings cluttering up the picture so bad that you can't see what is going on and can't figure out what the author is talking about. none of the pictures i've seen have little arrows pointing to the features that the author is talking about. when authors talk about checking the shavings to see if the cutting is going well, they never seem to show the difference between good shavings and bad. the best advice i've found from all the authors seems to be to "keep the chisel bevel on the wood so that you don't take too big a bite and the bevel burnishes the wood as it cuts it". sometimes that seems very difficult to do, but if i try to turn without following that advice, catches almost always occur and i end up having to do the cut using the bevel after all. the next best advice i've gotten from the authors is to present an angled cutting edge to the wood so that the edge slices the wood at about a 45 degree angle instead of 90 degrees. they say that slices through the wood fibers on end grain cleanly. the combination of these two rules has been very hard for me to follow....sometimes i can follow one or the other, but can't figure out how to follow both at the same time. You are lucky to be able to take classes...i work when most classes are held and don't know any turners in the local area...so i have to learn from books and the guys here in the newsgroup. good luck, rich