When I started turning, I made all my bowl gouges and put relatively short handles on them. After buying a couple I got frustrated by the huge handles when trying to finish the inside of a bowl. The handle kept bumping against the ways. Today I received a quarter inch one for finishing off inside small bowls. I immediately chucked it up and turned off half the handle. It's hard to change your ways when you get to be an old codger.
It's not the sword, but the swordsman.
No sense going into contortions to make someone else's idea of a tool fit your style.
Gerald, You could get a larger lathe, then the ways would be out of your way.
-- Martin Long Island, New York
Or I could remove the tailstock and slide the banjo down to the end and slide the headstock down to match. Easier to cut off the handle, and only have to do it once.
I look for unhandled tools, so I can make my own. It's not the size of the handles you get that bothers me so much, but the dumb standardized shapes and colors--blond or dark, with the long ogee shape. I like a heavy, fat handle with a unique shape for each tool. I can easily pick out my parting tool from the rack, it's the spalted maple with the ball shape on the end.
Ken Grunke
Used to be that you could get unhandled tools for $10 or so cheaper than the handled ones. Why not go that route and turn/reuse your own handles?
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Also helps your hands on days when you turn for hours to have different size/shape of grips.
One of the reasons why I have a half-dozen carving mallets - all with different grips.
Packard Woodworks sells almost all tools unhandled which is the way I buy them. The saving is usually only about $3.00 but even if it were zero I'd still do it this way. Most factory handles are too light, too small in diameter and too short to be comfortable for me.
Bill
Millers wrote:
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