Wood Turning

ONLY use it for spindle work.
The tang is too short and fragile to handle a major catch.
People have been injured by that broken off gouge flying around.

You probably knew that, but I thought I'd mention it anyway.
 
3/4" in a very useful size for spindle work when roughing out. I have a lot larger gouges as well, but not as comfortable to use, i find. For face plate work, I like that gouge size as well, but hardly an expert on bowl work, just a sometimes unschooled hobby.
 
The 3/4 is not so bad for going airborne. The big 1½ inchers are notorious for breaking when people try them on bowl work.
IMO rolled steel gouges should not be used on face plate work for that reason.
The milled roughing gouges are strong enough to handle any catch without breaking.
 
Most of my spindle turning is super rough chainsaw-cut blanks, or just regular old branches that I thought were neat. I have a ¾" gauge that I use to rough them into a cylinder, but it's not HSS and it dulls very quickly. I've gonna slowly upgrading my collection to all HSS and the ¾ rough is high on my list.


love
nick
 
Well now it feels like it's hard to part with and like I'd be taking a useless loss if I could utilize it. What kind of spindle projects do you do, nick? So far I've only tackled bowls and platters
 
Spindle work is great for refining your turning skills and working on detailing.
That'll come in handy for the bowls and platters.
 
My woodturning student came by today and wanted to turn a pepper grinder from a spectacular piece of beech burl.
It had too many cracks for that, but in order to utilize that wonderful piece of wood, I designed a candlestick instead.

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My neighbour's daughter who works for me sometimes, graduates on solstice day.
I had a rough turned lamp on the drying loft, that I made back in 2007, which she really liked, so I figured it would make a good graduation present.

Sycamore burl.

Also, I wanted to show that one can make more than balusters and bowls on a lathe, to maybe inspire some of the budding wood turners here.

It was bored out with a 2" bit from the bottom, to keep it from splitting when it dried. 400 grit and 2 times danish oil. I don't want too shiny a surface on a lamp, since it'll reflect the light too much.

I've made a bunch of these over the years. They used to sell pretty good.

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According to my kitchen scale 4723 grammes.

That is 10 pds, give or take.
 
The only cats around my place are dead ones, so I guess you are right.
It is bored out from the bottom. you can't simply dry a solid chunk of wood like that, it'll crack all over. So in order to give it a way to move and get rid of the stress that occurs as it dries, I bored a 2" hole from the bottom up.
That accounts for the relative light weight.
 
My grandson just turned 11 on May 30th. He's been wanting to start his own business, so here it is.......his very first wood turning lathe and his very first attempt at making something.

This is a piece of Mountain Ash that I removed from behind the Ramsey Bank here in Cando. The lathe is a 10"x18" 1/2 horsepower model from Harbor Freight.

Joel 100_6610.jpg 100_6609.jpg 100_6611.jpg 100_6612.jpg
 
There are a gazillion videos teaching turning tecniques on You tube.
That might be a way for him to pick up some pointers.
 
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