- Hey I'm Caleb, today
I'm gonna talk about 10 tips for anyone new
to turning on a lathe. Now this isn't a specific
technique video of here's how you hold your tool, et cetera, if you're looking for that,
I'll leave a few links below to people really good at that. I'm gonna be talking
about some generic things that often aren't
discussed or you'll pick up only after watching dozens
and dozens of project videos, those little tiny tips
that make a big difference. So stick with me and I'll show you how you can make stuff on the lathe too. Sanding on the lathe is pretty
easy because you can just turn on the lathe and then hold sandpaper against whatever you're working on. The problem is you're
probably sanding across the grain which makes the
scratches extremely visible. Fortunately, correcting
this is really simple. Before moving to the next
grit, I stop the lathe and sand along the piece
to erase those scratches. We're actually just changing the direction of the scratches but so
long as they're going with the grain our eyes
don't really notice them. Second thing, practice
woods, you might think because you're practicing
you want to just use some really cheap material, cheapest stuff you can probably find,
is going to be some pine down at your big box store, get some 2x4s, you're just practicing don't really care how it turns out. I really advise against
that, that's gonna be very discouraging because unless
your tools are razer sharp because soft woods or
pine are soft and tarty, so they're gonna gum up
your tools really bad cause of all that sap in it, the fibers gonna tear out super easy and you're not going to
really be able to hone your technique very well. I really like turning maple. And if you live in America at least, fortunately this stuff
practically grows like a weed so really if you just drive around enough, if there's trees, you
can probably find someone who's cut down a maple tree or an oak tree or something where you
can pick up some scraps and cut them up and
practice turning on those, cause the harder woods you're just not gonna get
much results, you'll see some burning and some fuzzies coming off, you're not gonna get a good cut till you get that right angle, and even as your tools dull a little bit, they're still gonna cut
not just rip shreds. But you don't have to take my word for it, you know 2x4s are cheap, so don't buy 10, just go buy one, cut it
up, throw it on a lathe, and see what happens, and you're
gonna realize pretty quick most people, that you just
don't get satisfactory results with soft wood, you need hard wood. Jumping back to the lathe, I want to talk about lathe selection and sizing. Size does matter, of
course, but a lot of people get preoccupied with the
wrong size, and just go for the longest bed that
they can get, but really it's the girth, the swing
which is the distance between the bottom and the
center, which is how wide of an object you can turn that
you're gonna run into that being a constraint a lot
sooner than the length in most cases, unless you
know you're gonna be turning baseball bats or long
spindles, don't worry how long the bed is, really 12, 15
inches is probably the longest I've turned, in fact I think a tool handle for a lathe tool I bought is
the longest thing I've turned. Example, my dad, I got him a small lathe, and pretty quickly he realized that they sold a bed extension,
so he bought it right away, slopped it on there, still don't think he's ever
actually needed the extension. It's pretty common, but once you get tired of buying hardware, you're gonna get into turning bowls, and bowls are really cool, but the size of a bowl
you can turn is limited by your swing, so pay more
attention to how much swing you have than how much
bed length you have, unless you know you're gonna
be turning long objects. Or if you just makes you feel
better to have a longer bed, I mean, it's your money, do what you want. Point four is lathe speed,
the RPM is how fast your piece is turning, not how fast
you're trying to like muscle through something, whenever
you start with a larger object or an object that's rough
and kind of unbalanced, you want to have a slow speed, and that's kinda the
disadvantage of a lot of beginner and really entry priced
lathes that just have a belt and pulley system, a
lot of them don't go as slow as you want to, especially if you're turning larger pieces of wood. So if you haven't bought a lathe yet, or you're thinking of
upgrading, I really recommend looking at the ones with DC motors and the digital speed
controller, the variable speed lathes, they tend to be able to go slower than the pulley lathes. Quick thanks to some of my top Patrons, Chris Harmond, Randy, Wilson
Mades, Gabby Johnston, and Thermy Hopkins. If you like free plans and free swag, be sure to check out my
Patreon, I also do a monthly tool contest this month's
question is your goals for the next year in your shop, so find the post, become
a Patron, answer that, and you'll be entered to
win this month's tool. Number five is gonna be real quick because you already know this
especially if you've done any wood working whether
it's hand tools, machines, whatever and that is don't use dull tools. As soon as you notice it start dulling or things just aren't going the right way, it's probably because your tools are dull, go sharpen them, if you've
got a traditional tool, take it to the grinder,
whatever you're using, sharpen it, if you're using carbide and it's not going right,
guess what they get dull too, they just take a lot
longer, turn it around, pay the 10 bucks, get
a couple more inserts, replace them when they get
dull, working with dull tools, it's just not worth it,
not worth it, not worth it, really just sharpen it, just change it. When using a four jaw chuck,
I found that the piece needs to be tightened twice. I lock it down pretty tight
and then give it a short spin, I see if it's spinning pretty centered, and tweak it if it needs some adjusting. Once it's good I tighten the chuck again, and it always surprises
me how easy it moves after that short spin, besides
the obvious safety reasons, that second tightening is
also going to result in better turnings, by
keeping the piece steadier. Six, weight down your lathe,
even small pieces of wood, once you start spinning them really fast have a lot of momentum and
force and if your lathe isn't tied, bolted, whatever
down to something heavy with a lot of mass, it's
gonna start wobbling and jumping everywhere, which you're like, "Ah, I can handle some
vibration", that's cool, but you have to remember all
that's going to be translated into your tool and it's really
hard to get good clean cuts when everything's going
everywhere, so my stand, I added mass cause this
is a pretty light lathe, by just making really
oversized stand with like 2x4s and I keep all my wood
offcuts and hardware and tools and stuff in
here, so it's pretty heavy and I don't get much vibration this way. But, a large dedicated stand might not be in the cards for you,
maybe you're setting this on a table that you can't bolt it too or you have one of those
metal kind of stands that don't have much weight
you can get with lathes, easy thing to do is just
find some extra weight to help weigh it down,
some cheap sources are like some bags of sand or
some bags of concrete, it's like two bucks for 80 pounds, or if this is a brand new hobby for you, your mother probably wants to support you, lot of weight there. Real quick, PPE, I always
wear my safety glasses whenever I'm in the shop,
if you're at the lathe, safety glasses aren't gonna cut it, you really want a full face shield, if you don't know why, just
turn long enough without one, you'll find out or if you
want the shorter version, go find a Facebook turning group and about once a week someone's
gonna post the reason why. Just hope you're not squeamish
if you look for those videos, also lots of dust, I mean you
should be making shavings, but let's face it, if
you're starting, you suck, so you're gonna make a lot
more dust than shavings at first, so good dust mask is key, especially one of the
fun things about turning is getting into the beautiful
exotics, but exotics tend to grow close to the
equator, in the tropical regions where there's lots of
insects, I mean plants there try to kill you, so they tend
to have toxins in the wood, you turn it, you breathe them, and the reason for those
toxins are to avoid insects, but you don't wanna
breathe it, so get a mask, and also general safety
with anything that turns, you never want anything
loose, so necklaces, if you still have your hair,
put it up, you get the idea. I won't pretend to be able to
explain the right answer here but getting your tool rest at
the right height and distance from the piece is very
important and it's different for traditional tools and
carbide tools and if you change tools like from a bowl
gouge to a spindle gouge or roughing gouge, you may
need to adjust the rest, and as you go from a rough square blank to a rounded piece the rest
is going to be farther away, from what you are turning
and may need to be adjusted, just always be conscious
of the relationship between the rest and your
wood so you can always know the right approach
angle to get the best action. I picked up this vintage
lathe for like $150 but I didn't have any
tools and you get new ones for around that same price
too and you start thinking, you watch some YouTube videos and you go, "Oh man, everyone's turning
with those cool carbide tools, and they say they're a lot easier to learn than the traditional tools, and maybe I should start
easy" and then you go, "Holy crap, that's $300
worth of tools right here, that's twice what I paid for my lathe. Is there a cheaper option, let's look at those traditional tools." So you do your due diligence and look at all the online reviews
and find out you can get you know, a pretty good
set of traditional tools for less than $100 that should
do everything you'll need for quite a while. But then as you use them,
the unexpected happens. They get dull. So you go to trusty YouTube or Google and find out the best way
to sharpen traditional tools is with a slow speed grinder. Well, you probably don't have. But only if you have
like super steady hands, and can hold precise angles, and if you can't, you should get a jig. And that's more money. Okay, so now I'm in twice
what my lathe cost me and some carbide tools
or traditional tools and a sharpening set
up, I've got some wood I'm ready to turn, except I just realized, I got no way to hold my wood in the lathe. I need some turning
centers or even better, what I found is what
all the cool people use are four jaw chucks, cause
I can put anything in there, and it's really the only
great way to turn bowls, so I need one of these. So I get a spur drive,
and I get a live center, and then the guy at the store talked me into this other kind of center cause it's better when this isn't good, and sometimes I'll need that, and I also find out that lathe
guys always drill their holes on the lathe to have centered
holes so I got to get a Jacobs Chuck that fits. And after I'm done messing
around with the pain that these can be and
things slipping in the spur, I get the holy grail, the four jaw chuck, but then I realize, for
this to be effective at all, I've got to buy more jaws,
because the set that came with it doesn't work for everything I want to do. Okay, so I've got a lathe,
I've got turning tools, stuff to sharpen my
tools when they get dull, I've got ways to hold my material, I've even got a little bit
of wood someone gave me, I'm ready to turn? Sure, but you're gonna get
tired of making chopsticks and candlesticks and other
phallic shaped objects because that's what everything looks like on the lathe when you start pretty quick, and you're gonna want to get some kits, and those cost money, and
here's the dirty thing about kits, there's a certain
kind you want to stick with, because otherwise you'll find out that you need to buy things like this. This is a 2.04 inch drill bit. Why does a 2.04 inch
drill bit need to be made? Because turning kits require
the weirdest drill bit sizes ever that I've never even heard of. And I think that comes from
manufacturers wanting to make hardware that's a standard
size, not thinking that that's gonna need an irregular size hole for things to fit and allow for glue. Anyway, it gets really
frustrating when all your stuff shows up but you didn't
look at the instructions and now you've got to place a second order to get a 2.04 inch drill
bit, a number 29 drill bit, and a 57/64th drill bit. I've circumvented that hassle by sticking with threaded insert type hardware, and Rockler has a great variety of it, and they just released some new ones, like the cheese knife kit, bar tools, some gardening tools, they've had some pizza
pie slicers for awhile, and even like their salt and
pepper shakers are pretty cool. Cause the way these work is
you have a threaded insert that uses a pretty
standard size drill bit, so you drill a hole, and
then you can use a hex key that fits in there to screw this into whatever you're turning
and then this just screws into the wood, that's pretty easy. The other nice thing is because
you have a threaded insert in your blank, you know, whatever it is you're going to be turning, you can turn that on a mandrel, so once you buy a couple of
these that have the different thread sizes, and there's
really only two sizes these normally come in,
which is a quarter 20 and 3/8ths inch I think, so
you get those two mandrels and then you can screw
that threaded insert onto your mandrel, put
this into your Jacobs chuck and you're ready to turn. And if you're cheap you can
even make your own mandrel with like a locknut and a bolt. The other style hardware I stick with are like these and they just have a shaft, you can see they've got a
little bit of material removed to give them somewhere to
bite, so all you have to do is drill a hole and epoxy that in there, and you can find a lot
more different kind of kits like this, like this is one I
found at a woodworking show, that's a nut cracker and
again, it's just a shaft drill the right size hole
and epoxy it in there. And I'll forgive these kits
because they're pretty simple, because all you have to do is glue them, but this proves my point,
requires a 21/64th drill bit. Fortunately, if you ever
bought one of these like three deep style drill bit
sets, they have all the 64ths normally between 1/16th and
3/4s so you probably have one, but you only have one,
right here's my 21/64ths. Fortunately in this case it's a large bit, so it's unlikely to break, but yeah why can't we use standard sizes? And yeah yeah, I know,
21/64ths is a standard size, I mean, it's in a drill bit kit, but I'm working on my grumpy
old man get off my lawn thing so give me a break. And there you have it, some
of the things I've learned over my bit of turning and watching a bunch of
other turning videos, I hope this was helpful
and you learned something or were at least entertained,
and until next time, make time to make something. Maybe on the lathe.
