Traditional Grind on a bowl gouge.....

Stuart Ablett

Member
Messages
15,917
Location
Tokyo Japan
After seeing what Bernie had to say about the Traditional grind on a bowl gouge, I went and did a bit of reading up on it, in books (gasp!) and the net.

I then destroyed a lousy piece of Ginko wood I had roughed out some time ago!.

trad_tip1.JPG trad_tip2.JPG tip_main_bevel_angle.JPG
Here is the tip, with my interpretation of a "Traditional Grind", the gouge is a 1/4" Hamlet.


tool_held.JPG tool_held_closeup.JPG
Here is how I hold it in use.

fine_curlies.JPG
I seem to get some fairly decent cuts from it, nice fine curlies!!

here is a cut I've done only halfway, the wood, the Ginko is REALLY soft and hard to get a nice clean cut, the rough part is where I've done a normal cut with a normal bowl gouge, that was nice and sharp, but on this soft stuff, it still cut poorly............

half_finished_cut.JPG
....the smooth part of the cut was accomplished with the traditionally ground bowl gouge, I think the difference is rather dramatic.

smooth_cuts.JPG
Here is that section of the bowl with the cuts finished. I also spritzed the surface with water.
 
OK the rest of this has little to do with the traditional grind bowl gouge, but with the fate of this crappy piece of wood I was trying to work.... :D

Once I started to get thin, and I was doing the finishing cuts on the inside, spritzing the surface with water, the bowl began to crack :doh:

BIG cracks.....

cracking_ginko.JPG cracking_ginko2.JPG craking_ginko3.JPG

I tried to fix it, I drilled a hole to stop the crack, then I filled it with instant coffee cystals and glued everything with CA glue.............

fill_coffee.JPG filled_coffee.JPG glued_coffee_overfill.JPG over_filled_glued.JPG

It then proceeded to crack in about ten other places :bang:

I turned the natural edge off as that was getting really warped and wobbling around then I just gave up and started to spin it as thin as I could, just for practice..........

too_thin.JPG
:D I did get a lot of practice and it was kind of fun turning it to the explosive point..... :eek:

In the end, I got some good practice, I learned a fair bit and I had some fun too. The wood was not worth the trouble of brining to a finish, but it provided me with a laugh and a giggle...........

rip.JPG
The right place for this one, no save here! :clap:

So if you have an extra bowl gouge kicking around, give this traditional grind a chance, you just might like it! :wave:
 
Thanks for the info Stu. It looks like you should have saved the bowl and used it for a lampshade:D Are you serious about the coffee crystals? I haven't heard of that before.
 
Stu:
Great post and good information about the gouge grind. I keep a bowl gouge at 60° for the same "inside bowl transition" purpose. Like you said, it really helps with final cuts on some of the more tear-out prone woods.

I really like the way you write your photo-tutorials, and appreciate your willingness to teach what you have learned - as well as to show your mishaps. :doh:

As I tell my kids - it's OK to make a mistake if you learn from it... not that it's ever happened to me, but... :D
 
Are you serious about the coffee crystals? I haven't heard of that before.

Shawn.....If a bowl develops wide cracks I often use crushed instant coffee crystals to color clear epoxy and use epoxy to fill the crack. Others I know including Stu use instant coffee crystals and CA to fill cracks. The coffee crystals just give it a very dark brown color.
 
Stu looks like you made a good save. A lot of times I save the sanding dust to mix with epoxy. That works pretty well. I also use the conventional grind and spritz with water on the final couple of cuts.
 
Stu,

Nice post. If I actually ever get a bowl gouge, I'll have to try that grind... ;)

But I can't believe you threw that thing away. There must be some use for it. Course, that's just me. When I was little, I threw a bent nail away. I can still hear my father saying "That's a perfectly good piece of metal!" ;)

Thanks,

Bill
 
Top