I'm new here and I think its great. I'm new in wood turning so far I love it, I've been turning pens It's time to move on and I'm trying to turn a box, the wood I have is maple (4x4 piece) I found from work that we use to keep material up from the floor for the fork lift I'm trying to hollow it out with a 5/8 bowl gouge but Its getting caught (kick back) I dont want to give up but dont know what to do. I'm i using the proper tool ? what am i doing wrong???
There are better tools, but a light touch and a good fingernail will do a fine, if more-time-consuming job. Try lowering your toolrest so the nose of your gouge faces a bit up, but not above centerline. Lay the bevel on the wood and rotate gently until the edge starts to work. Draw towards you.
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and the goblet sequence might help.
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projects in words and pictures.
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has some stuff. Fred Holder has a commercial publication I'm sure he can reference as well.
Lot of people like scrapers, but they've never behaved well for me, so I avoid them. Someone else will give us both pointers.
I am newer at it than you are. A friend who does some bowls said he never uses anything but scrapers on the inside of bowls. So that's what I have been using. One issue that I had is that its hard to get the tool rest close enough to the inside of bowl so I made one of those S-shaped tool rests that you see from time to time. It helped me a lot.
If you haven't watched some of the U-tube bowl turning videos, you are missing something.
First thing, the Bowl Gouge is not a tool to hollow endgrain. (That said, there are a number of experienced turners who do use a bowl gouge to hollow endgrain pieces, Stuart Batty is one such turner. He uses a bowl gouge for just about everything.) A fingernail ground spindle gouge of 3/8" or 1/2" will work fairly well. Start by drilling a hole in the center almost to the depth that you plan to hollow. Then make cuts with a fingernail ground spindle gouge from the center up to the left toward about 10:00 O'Clock on the face of the box. Use a sort of scooping type of cut and don't take too big of a bite at any pass. You should be cutting just to the left of the tip of the tool. As you get deeper, roll the gouge on its side with the flute toward the outside and use a pulling scraping cut to smooth and straighten the sides of the box.
A narrow square end scraper will also work fairly well. You use this tool by pushing straight in with the tip of the tool slightly down and on centerline of the wood. A straight in push toward the outside of the box, move toward the center and repeat until the entire surface has been lowered a bit. Then repeat only going down about 1/8" or less at a time. I often grind these out of an old carpenter's chisel or a new one purchased from Harbor Freight.
The Box Tool sold by Crown Tools is a 3/8" piece of round stock with a grind on the top almost to the center of the stock and then a bevel on the bottom side of about 50 or 60 degrees with a slight taper on the end of a couple of degrees to the right. You can make a fairly serviceable copy out of a piece of drill rod of about 3/8" diameter. This tool works quite well, especially on harder close grain woods. It is used about the same as the small square end scraper I described above.
As I mentioned in a recent post, the Hunter Tool and the Eliminator Tool are both excellent end grain hollowing tools. They use round carbide cutters that are very sharp. When they dull, you loosen the screw and rotate the cutter. When it is all used up you throw it away and buy a new cutter. The cutters last a long time.
Another tool that works great for hollowing end grain is the Oneway Termite Tool, which is a small ring tool that work very well for hollowing endgrain. It is subject to catches in an inexperienced turners hands. It works similar to a gouge with the handle put on at
Welcome to the addiction! As you're finding out, every project that's a bit different is an excuse to buy more tools..
Scrapers will change your world, if you learn to use them sharp, lightly and at the proper angle, as in other chisels.. I found about scrapers about 20 years later than I would have liked and use them a lot, especially on boxes..
As get ready to invest a bit more, here are to tools that I use for hollowing that are fairly easy to learn.. I don't do "deep hollowing", so I don't need more exotic/expensive stuff..
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Check out Darrel Feltmate's pages... Bookmark them for further webucation, also.. He uses a hook tool that's shop made... (He's also a master turner and makes it look easy)
"Hello, my name is (insert name or alias), and I'm a turnaholic."
The group response is:
"Hi (insert name or alias). Welcome to the group. The coffee's in the back."
So welcome to the group Jose. Sorry - only virtual coffee available.
Now for hollowing end grain - presuming you want to do a cut or lidded box - cheat. Get a drill chuck that'll fit in your tailstock. They're around $30. Then get a 1/2" and a 3/4" forstner bit. Drill a big hole in the end grain - to leave you some room to maneuver a turning tool - scraper, gouge - or a skew (I'm presuming you have a chuck and maybe an extra set of jaws).
Assuming you're not doing things deeper than about 4" or so, a 1/2" skew, used sort of like a scraper will do straight sides and radiused sides to bottom adequately, sanding if you want smoooth.
This page and the next page should illustrate how I use the skew for hollowing. Back up to the index for the turning and chucking sequence.
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Now - do you have a sponsor? You're going to need someone to get you through those urges, at 3 AM, to TURN. charlie b
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