hu lowery
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- 445
My name is of course Hu as my handle states. I have a few toys for woodworking but have always spent more time with metals and plastics, a bit of time on a cue lathe too which is closer to a metal lathe than a wood lathe. My brother and I bought out a two car garage size woodworking shop about six months ago and we got a bunch of DVD's with the purchase. That is where the trouble started. I moved to the middle of nowhere, just me, a TV, and those DVD's to watch over and over. One had a section on green wood turning. Somehow it seemed the thing to do so I rooted around in the back corners of my storage and unearthed this old lathe. A bit frustrating, I can't find any of the four or five sets of turning tools or the nice individual tools I have bought at one time or another. Had the itch to make chips and PMI is only about thirty miles from me. I scored a bowl gouge to go with the cheap parting tool, the only thing I found in storage, and fired up the lathe.
Zero experience using chisels and gouges so I started cautiously. I turned a couple of six inch sections of 1.125x1.50 dark mystery wood from a friend's attic sorta round. Sure was easier when I was just watching it on the video!
With all this experience behind me I was ready to turn a natural wood bowl and I had some natural wood, four or five year old cedar I had saved for another project. It is only six or eight inches around so I decide for this practice turning I would ignore the pith and just turn. Got the wood mounted sideways between centers and went to power whittling. A given the bark was gone but I was hanging on to the modest wings on the piece and it soon looked something like a vessel. Out of daylight, I went inside. My "shop" is the back porch at the moment. The next morning I scraped a little on the outside and saw the wood had held it's shape well. Still took a good bit of wood off the bottom to carve away a spot where old wood was showing. That'll matter later.
I have a live center, a drive center, and a face plate. I have at least one wood lathe chuck with multiple jaws, AWOL too. However I am turning this shape for experience and I want to hollow some. Something else that is much easier watching than doing! I do get things going a bit but about thirty minutes into hollowing I get a catch. A bit confused, I was watching the corners of my straight cut gouge, not a fingernail cut yet, and didn't see what caught. I went back in several times trying to figure what I was doing wrong. The big wing is history and this is no longer a natural edge vessel but still a fair sized salad bowl can be had. Another thirty minutes and both wings are damaged, looking more like this may be a cereal bowl. I think I am just trying to work too big of a tool in too small of an area and the square cut gouge ain't helping any, it is about 5/8" or a little bigger US measurement, 1/2" English. Finally have my little dessert bowl hollowed out and as a plus the holes left by the pith are gone.
I have a little bit of wobble to the bowl for some reason, not too bad. I also have an uglier curve where bowl wall meets bowl bottom than what I had last night. Things are pretty thick down there, I should be able to sneak a nicer curve onto there. A few more minutes work and I discovered why they call it a blow up instead of a less dramatic sounding term. Things weren't going badly when it happened and I didn't catch. Heat? Vibration? Offending the turning gods? I don't know but all of a sudden my little dessert bowl is in five or six pieces. None hit me or damaged anything else so all I have done is get a lot of firsts out of the way. I retrieved some hopefully spalted oak later this evening and am going to try to figure how to split and cut it tomorrow to make a decent bowl or two after watching a few more video's. I'm thinking start with more bowl and less hollow vessel next time.
All my posts won't be quite this long, this one included my entire woodturning career!
Hu
Zero experience using chisels and gouges so I started cautiously. I turned a couple of six inch sections of 1.125x1.50 dark mystery wood from a friend's attic sorta round. Sure was easier when I was just watching it on the video!
With all this experience behind me I was ready to turn a natural wood bowl and I had some natural wood, four or five year old cedar I had saved for another project. It is only six or eight inches around so I decide for this practice turning I would ignore the pith and just turn. Got the wood mounted sideways between centers and went to power whittling. A given the bark was gone but I was hanging on to the modest wings on the piece and it soon looked something like a vessel. Out of daylight, I went inside. My "shop" is the back porch at the moment. The next morning I scraped a little on the outside and saw the wood had held it's shape well. Still took a good bit of wood off the bottom to carve away a spot where old wood was showing. That'll matter later.
I have a live center, a drive center, and a face plate. I have at least one wood lathe chuck with multiple jaws, AWOL too. However I am turning this shape for experience and I want to hollow some. Something else that is much easier watching than doing! I do get things going a bit but about thirty minutes into hollowing I get a catch. A bit confused, I was watching the corners of my straight cut gouge, not a fingernail cut yet, and didn't see what caught. I went back in several times trying to figure what I was doing wrong. The big wing is history and this is no longer a natural edge vessel but still a fair sized salad bowl can be had. Another thirty minutes and both wings are damaged, looking more like this may be a cereal bowl. I think I am just trying to work too big of a tool in too small of an area and the square cut gouge ain't helping any, it is about 5/8" or a little bigger US measurement, 1/2" English. Finally have my little dessert bowl hollowed out and as a plus the holes left by the pith are gone.
I have a little bit of wobble to the bowl for some reason, not too bad. I also have an uglier curve where bowl wall meets bowl bottom than what I had last night. Things are pretty thick down there, I should be able to sneak a nicer curve onto there. A few more minutes work and I discovered why they call it a blow up instead of a less dramatic sounding term. Things weren't going badly when it happened and I didn't catch. Heat? Vibration? Offending the turning gods? I don't know but all of a sudden my little dessert bowl is in five or six pieces. None hit me or damaged anything else so all I have done is get a lot of firsts out of the way. I retrieved some hopefully spalted oak later this evening and am going to try to figure how to split and cut it tomorrow to make a decent bowl or two after watching a few more video's. I'm thinking start with more bowl and less hollow vessel next time.
All my posts won't be quite this long, this one included my entire woodturning career!
Hu