Riding the Bevel and Grinding the Bevel

Yer getting things confused Mac. F'rinstance I never advocated "riding," but "guiding" bevels, and you still have to poke across to get behind and peel. As a mnemonic, "every stroke starts with a poke" works.

I remember long disagreements with Mangimelli over the business of parallel to edge rather than perpendicular as a bevel reference.

Hello Bob,

My normal rule of thumb for lathe speed it to increase the speed until it vibrates a bit and then back it off until the vibration goes away. That often makes the speed fairly low for an out of balance piece of turning and as you say you can speed it up as it comes into balance. The basic rule put out by Dale Nish in one of his books was this: The diameter of the workpiece in inches times the speed of the lathe should be between 6000 and 9000. For example the low end on a 12 inch bowl would be 500 rpm and the high end would be 750 rpm. This was stated for a safe speed. A 12 inch bowl rotating at 2000 rpm is very dangerous and I highly recommend sharpening your gouge rather than increasing the speed to that high. Another thing that often eliminates fuzzies is to step down in the size of the tool. If a 1/2" bowl gouge is leaving fuzzies, try a 3/8" bowl gouge. If that still leaves fuzzies, try steppind down to a 1/4" bowl gouge. All of this without increasing the lathe speed outside of the recommended range.

If you were turning spindles (like pens) with a 1/2 inch diameter you could supposedly safely turn them at speed between 12,000 rpm and

18,000 rpm. Unfortunately, most lathes will not go higher than about 3,000 rpm so one cannot turn in that speed range.

Fred Holder

I follow Bill Grumbine's method... Turn at a speed that's comfortable for you and for the lathe/wood.. Pretty simple, but I guess I am too... ;-]

mac

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