Bowl Coring with the McNaughton by Reed Gray aka robo hippy

I will never forget buying the McNaughton Center saver system I've been turning for over a year and was making bowls and they were selling well I had some extra money in my pocket and I was walking through the local wood craft store looking for another tool that I simply couldn't live without and it was like the clouds parted and there it was glittering in the sunlight saves time saves wood saves money add to that that it was my birthday month with a 10% discount and it just doesn't get any better than that no more tears over wasting the inside of a big bowl well I took it home read the instructions and then took it out to the shop to put it to work I dug out some dry black walnut and sugar maple planks for testing I got a lot of chattering there were some nasty catches and things were flying off the lathe quoting bill krumbine bad words were said very frustrated I put it back in the box and there it stayed gathering dust some months later our local club was trying to figure out what to do for the next month's demonstration and I asked if anyone had the McNaughton system and knew how to use it one guy did so at the next meeting I actually got to see the tool in action this made a huge difference for me as I am one of those people who learn better by seeing it being done rather than by reading about it I returned to the shop dusted it off and proceeded to tackle the project again it was a matter of pride I knew I could make it work with a lot of diligence and persistence and a good number of lampshades I finally figured out how to make it work now with several years experience in a couple thousand cores I know how to make the tool work and hope that I can show you some of the secrets behind learning how to use this tool it does have a learning curve but it does work well hi my name is Reed gray I'm also known as Robo hippy on some of the chat groups and I'm here to show you some of the tricks and techniques that I've picked up on learning to use the McNaughton bull saver or Center saver system I've been using it for a number of years and taking a couple thousand different cores and of course when I started off as difficult to use but through lots of trial and error and lots of errors I learned how to use it and actually got to be fairly competent with it laughter I kind of knew my way around the tool I'd sit out in front of the local wood craft store and do demos and people had asked me questions about it I progressed to the point where I actually did demos for the clubs then people started asking me about the other two bull coring systems that are out there so I didn't have them didn't know how they worked and I went out and bought them and no I don't really have a tool buying problem all in the matter of research but of the systems that are out there this is the one that I use ninety-five percent of the time it is by far and away the most versatile where you can core standard bowls you can core vases you can core plates it is also the easiest one for me to set up to use and to sharpen do you remember that what I'm showing you here today it does work for me it may or may not work for you but when you do get this tool please read all the manufacturers recommendations for use and practice general shop safety I haven't done anything to the point where I do it the exact same way every single time which means I reserve the right to change my mind on how I do a few things sometime in the future now is this a tool for you is this a tool you need well for some of us need has absolutely nothing to do with it but as a production bolt earner this is an absolute must-have tool it does save you time as in it is much faster to remove a core than it is to turn out the center it saves you wood so instead of getting one bowl out of a chunk you can get to three or four of them and it also saves you money whether you buy your bowl blanks or whether you go out and harvest firewood you have an expenditure in time and this basically saves you lots of wood if you're only turning 1015 bowls a year it's not really worth it unless you want it if you're turning some exotic pieces one or two cores can save you a lot of money if you're turning 30 40 50 bowls a year and you're selling them it saves you money and it is a tool definitely worth getting okay will this work your lathe generally horsepower requirements are in the one horsepower Plus and this is designed for all lays that will turn 14 inches in diameter and higher with the 12 inch lathes the tool rest doesn't fit all of them from the bottom of the tool rest to the cutting edge is about three inches high and some of the twelve inch lays this is a little bit too high for them generally with a one horsepower lay that's a little bit marginal on the horsepower but if you go further slowly on it don't be really aggressive with it turn your speed up a little bit it will work just fine okay this is a tool rest the on bowl coring system we have three pieces this is the post these are available in various lengths and diameters depending on which particular lathe you have this is the blade support goes on the post like that you notice there's a little groove in here this is for the gates or the fingers fit onto this way little set screw in there tighten it down holes this rotates this rotates this is one of the older systems this had just for the two blades the standard and the large set this is one of the newer ones still the same thing we have three gates there this one is for the large set this one's for the medium set this one is for the mini set ok this tool rest is designed primarily for lays about fourteen inch or with a fourteen inch swing or greater the problem you'll run into on some of the twelve insulate as distance from the bottom of this support part to the cutter edge is about three inches so this won't fit all of your twelve inch lays okay this is another modification that I've made this works for me it may or may not work for you but if you will notice on the tool post I actually have a little dent or divot there inside this groove what that does for me this has to swing while you're coring because your handle moves around and it's designed so that when the gates on there that this also pivots I found this to be a bit of a problem because as soon as I put pressure on the blade the gate would want to pivot to the outside so what I did put the little divot here and the post put this in here and then I take my set my set screws in this actually locks the gates in place the gates serve as a fulcrum or a leverage point for you while you're coring and when my leverage point or fulcrum is moving I just found that for me to stay on course so now when it's locked down this stays solid just makes it a little bit easier especially if you're going to cut a curve off or correct a little bit to the inside okay this is the handle that comes with a bull coring system this is your standard handle it's about 15 inches long this is a shorter piece this one would be one that you would use only with the larger set of blades so it goes into the base there tighten it to little set screws keep this together primarily I've done concrete for 30-plus years and I like things over built rather than under built blade goes in here same way to set screws I don't think it makes any difference where the blade goes in this way or this way in tighten with two set screws that's it okay these are the standard blades with a McNaughton center savings system this is a large set of blades you have a straight blade a large curved blade and a medium curved blade these are blades are four bowls from about 18 inches on down this is your medium set of blades again a straight blade large curved medium curved and small curved these will take bowls about 14 inches max on down this is your mini set of blades and a straight blade large curved medium curved and small curved and these are good for bowls from about 12 inches in diameter on down the original blades or the older style blades as they came if you notice they basically were flush to the blade on this side and a little bit of a flare or dog gear out on this side Mike Mahoney basically came up with the idea of your spear point here now what I've done for my modification is I've cut the point off square what this has done for me is it reduces the amount of surface area so with one like this you'll get about a half inch white shaving with one like this you get about a 3/8 of an inch wide shaving main thing it does just reduces the amount of cutting pressure the idea with the spear point is that it is really handy when you're coring burrow or crotch woods which don't have straight grains you don't want to turn down to a small stub and then break or twist the core off if you don't cut it almost all the way off you can actually rip through the bottom of the bowl even if it is a half inch or more thick so this works a little better if you're going to cut it all the way off this just reduces your pressure mini-set again take the spear point off made it square this just works a little easier for me okay now with the old-style blades you can grind a spear point on it or grind it off square or the cutter is still not proud on both sides of the blade the newer blades where it is sticks out on both sides work a lot better ok these are typical shavings that I will get with the square point on there this is about a 3/8 of an inch wide shaving with the spear point I'm going to get one like this which is about a half inch wide that's just how much difference there isn't pressure with the mini set kind of the same thing this is what you get with the spear point this is what you get with a cut off square so from about a 3/8 of an inch wide shaving to a quarter white shaving okay this is a laser pointer system that McNaughton has come out with to go on their Center saver and it's an addition or an accessory that I just love one of the biggest problems you have is you never know exactly where the point of the blade is the laser pointer this takes all that guessing away over years of using this tool I developed the habit of aiming shallow to prevent from making lampshades it seems like most of the time that was either too shallow or too deep by aiming shallow I didn't bottom out as often what the laser allows you to do is to aim for the perfect core every single time if you are off course you can see it before you go through the bottom and make corrections this isn't the standard hex wrench that comes with the system I found this one a lot harder to lose in the shavings and you do need to supply your own laser pointer so you have a bracket mounts on the handle this is your vertical post that's in here to set screws tighten it up okay vertical post is in so I'll put a blade in lock it down stand it up this is the arm for the laser pointer slide it through the bracket this over here put the pointer in adjust it out toes right on the point lock it down this way you can tell where the point is anytime you want you know exactly whether you're on or off course and if you need to correct very simple works really nicely and just love it okay now this has been modified from the standard as it comes and I think we're all familiar with the engineers model that if it ain't broke take it apart and fix it anyway the way it comes the bracket is made to mount through the same two set screws that you use to mount your blade they give you a longer screw set it down tighten up your blade slip the bracket over the screw then tighten the bracket down with a nut I found this to be a bit cumbersome particularly for production turning the idea was that the bracket would sit off to the side and you could raise or lower the post according to what size of bull we were turning and I just found that this was not particularly practical to me and my first attempt at modifying it drilled and tapped a hole and screwed it down or bolted it down and this worked fine but I didn't have the bracket perfectly perpendicular to the blade it allowed me some time to play around with it and see how well it worked and I like the way it works so what I did but the bracket on so that it was exactly perpendicular to go to a welding shop had them tack weld it that just worked a lot better for me never have to mess with it anytime I want to change blades no problem one other modification I've made this is your bracket for the arm that holds the laser just put a thumb screw in it don't have to reach for your allen wrench every single time you want to change it just open and close mounting the bowl blank obviously when you're on the delay then your coring you don't want your blank to come off in the midst of a core what you do there are two basic ways that you can mount it one is with a recess or mortise and the other way is with a tenant basically using the chuck to expand or chuck to grab onto a tenner with that is the most secure method for mounting it to your lathe if you're going to use a mortise or a recess you still want the base to be about a third or more of the diameter of the top of the bowl and make sure that you leave a recess or a shoulder on there that is big enough for the chucks to expand into and not real thin on the outside so you've got plenty of wood on it if you're going to do a tenon it's still about the same thing you want your tenon to be at about a third or more of the diameter of the bowl so you've got plenty of wood to grab on to okay personally I found the mortise to be the easiest and simplest method for me if you want to see a good example of having a tenon turned on the bottom and coring that way check out Mike Mahoney's DVD that's the way that he does it I would suppose if you wanted to you could actually use a faceplate on the bottom for attaching it to the lathe personally I wouldn't because you're going to lose too much off the bottom you could use a glue block on the bottom but I wouldn't really trust it there's a lot of shear force on it while you're cutting one catch could send it off and you would lose your bowl now the style of Bowl that I like to turn I'll take a piece of green wood turn it to finish thickness let it dry and warp and then sand it and finish it the easiest way from mounting my blank for turning the bottoms that I found drill a recess use a big Forstner bit that's pretty close to the size of your jaws after you take your cores each core is already going to be automatically centered because you already have the recess in there so first mount it on the lathe make sure it's on good and tight this one's already been turned down but the mortise on the bottom is actually my finished bottom I don't do anything beyond that other than sand and finish move this into place the idea is that you want the mortise to match as closely as possible the exact size of the jaws of your Chuck it gives you a better fit you got a little bitty jaws on Chuck and a great big recess you're not going to get a very good grip on it one dedicated tool that I have for doing that this is a compass this is actually super glued into place I found out through trial and error that if you use this a lot during the course of the day at vibrates and it keeps getting bigger and bigger and bigger the idea is to mark smaller than what you will need and then work your way out until it fits perfectly you want to touch only this edge which is on the inside of the downward side if you touch this edge it's going to flip over and Bend so turn it on mark inside the line first little closer now that's the exact diameter on the jaws of my Chuck to cut it use a specialized tool this is a dovetail scraper it's available through some of the catalogs the angle on the dovetail here exactly matches the angle on the jaws of my Chuck and if this is parallel to the ways of the lathe that gives me the exact angle so it matches first cut is going to be inside the line second cut will just barely take the line and the idea with this cut is you don't want to push it in and slide it over to get your dovetail you plunge it in at the angle of the dovetail and it does is pretty much all by itself turn it on cut inside I'll go from 1/8 to 1/4 inch deep depending on the bowl size now take the line just barely little deeper remove the rest of the tenon now final cut here put this in let it rest against the bottom just barely touching it what this does it helps remove a little bit of that unevenness you get from the bounce of where you're going from cross grain to long grain that's pretty much it for the recess if you have a piece of wood that is really stringy you can actually get a small spindle gouge or detail gouge in there and clean up the edges a little bit okay now that the recess has been turned reverse the bowl get it ready to core put it on make sure there are no little shavings in the recess I can make it wobble quite a bit go around your chuck a couple of times to tighten it up see how well it spins that's just about perfect ready to core okay we have the bowl mounted now it's time to core when you're coring you want your blade set at center height what I do set this in use like when your spur Drive in the center to get your height and then make a little hollow form endgrain form that fits under there and this will keep it at center height Center height that's the same for every single blade then you don't have to adjust it every single time so in down into place and move this up to about where I want to go I'm going to take about a half inch wide or leave this about a half inch wide here and I'll actually put a pencil line on here makes a little bit easier for you to see and of course I never do this when I'm doing this for myself so that's about where I'm going to be coring now for visual aids as far as trying to figure out where you want to aim first thing I do will place the blade up against the outside of the bowl this gives me an idea the curve I will also hold it up over the top over the gates to about exactly where I want the depth or the blade to end up for my cut so this is in here nothing set or finished or loosened it up that's about where I want my core go I want to aim in a little bit lock this up that's about where I want to go ie my laser here okay and ready to core first thing you want to make sure the blade is up against the support arm tool is designed to work this way this is not here to catch you just in case you have a big catch this is how the tool functions so turn the speed on speed wise is kind of a comfort range however you feel comfortable or whatever speed you feel comfortable turning at I generally go in the five to eight hundred range I don't really know exactly because this lathe doesn't have a speed readout if you're turning with a one horsepower lathe or less you might want to turn the speed up a little bit towards a higher end range again this will take some experimentation idea is cut in until it starts to bind or the shavings plug it up clear the cut go back in cut some more wood out till you get down to the bottom so turn the speed up a little bit more and start cutting getting a little bit of binding there it seems to be more on the inside that one looks like it's going a little bit shallow a little bit too deep so I'll come back the top take a little bit off the inside Oh it looks pretty close see how much wobble I have here yeah that one's ready to come out little pop you can see I corrected I got a little bit too deep came back out move it in just a little bit more towards the center now if you want to Boal that's the exact same process the only difference is the same difference that you have between turning a regular Bowl and a natural edge Bowl I can't use my recess to expand a Chuck into on top here primarily because you have to get in deep enough that your jaw's or the face face of the chuck is going to be sitting on the bark and some of the jobs are going to be into wood some of them will be into nothing so what I do is take a three and a quarter inch Forstner bit drill a flat spot in there then secure a faceplate okay setting up the core a natural edge Bowl is still pretty much the same thing take the blade you proper blades you want I put it up against the edge this particular one has a little tighter curve than the blade here move the banjo into place about where I want it this is up here for about a half inch thickness angled in just slightly lock it down lock this down I do generally want to go a little bit slower here than what I would do on a regular Bowl primarily because part of the time you're going to be in the wood and part of the time you're going to be in the air also when I'm doing a natural edge Bowl I don't put any pressure sideways on it until I'm clear down inside solid wood all the way so slowly first and ease it in slime it up play in and up binding up a little bit and come back to the top and take a little bit off the outside that one did go airborne a little bit sooner than I expected now if you notice there is quite a bit more noise and chattering with the tool this is a piece of honey locust or I've also heard it called moraine locusts it's a lot harder a lot denser a lot more fibrous than something like cherry that's why you're getting the more noise and the more chattering but same basic idea turning a natural edge as you do the regular Boles you okay finding the bottom of the bowl the only thing that drives me crazy er than doing this going through the bottom of the bowl while you're coring it is going through the bottom of the bowl while you're turning it so I've devised a very simple method for taking care of that so you never have to worry about it it's a two-piece jig first piece I call my cheater stick this is a measure exactly from the headstock to flush with the jaws of your chuck I call it a cheater stick because it saves me from doing the math in my head the other piece is my tape measure so get this bowl back on here put it on I take a measure from the headstock out to the rim of the bowl just sighting across that this one says right at 8 and 3/4 inches so I put the cheater stick at 8 and 3/4 inches stick it inside the bowl side across the bowl again right now I am reading slightly over an inch and that's got a good-sized tenon on the bottom so that means I've got about a 5/8 inch thick distance between the jaws of my Chuck and where the bottom of the wood is here so basically just turn it out keep measuring back and forth and you can accurately measure the thickness of the bottom of your bowl to within 1/16 of an inch okay flatten off the rim round it off take several passes down the inside now that ought to be fairly close tape measure out to the edge we have Oh eight and eleven sixteenths here I'm sitting at just a hair over half an inch so I got to come down about another eighth or so to get this this is just about 3/8 of an inch there check it again we're at eight and eleven sixteenths again using this method you can determine the bottom thickness accurately to within 1/16 of an inch Jeeter stick tape measure measure from the headstock out to the rim of the bowl right at 8 and 3/4 a hair under if you look at this one we now have about 3/8 of an inch thick bottom maybe seven sixteenths cheater stick in place okay now this same method for the bottom of the bowl will work on natural edge bowls the problem you have is there's no straight place to say it across the top to get an accurate measure so what I do piece of plywood on the ways of the lathe big square on it use this from my edge that I'm citing to so measure from the headstock out here I've got about 12 and 3/4 inches place this at 12 and 12 and 3/4 measure back 12 3/4 measure back and this leaves me at about 360 s and one-inch thick for this one so same basic idea but since you don't have a straight edge for the bowl to sight on stand a square up like that net works just as well okay these are very simple to sharpen the our scrapers you do use a burr on the top edge most of the time I'll just take one of the diamond hones usually one of the coarser ones just a few upward strokes on the front is fine if they do need to be resharpened on the grinder it's very simple I usually write the heel just a little bit lower it down so they start getting sparks over front edge nice fresh brunette now if you're sharpening the spear point same thing you have to sharpen each edge separately roll it over again rub the heel lower down we over the other side love the heel nice fresh-cut English nice little blue on top now if you'll notice the thin line on top here this is a hard piece of metal veneer bonded to the softer metal of the blade never sharpen the top of this is you can actually grind through it okay this is an illustration I've just to give you an idea of how many bowls you can get out of a blank and kind of how the coring process works basically this is a 14 inch Bowl wide Bowl this is about 6 inches deep this is the recess that I use and the black lines represent the curves I've done all these cores basically they will be with your medium curved blade one thing to remember too here is that this is done on paper of course everything works better on paper than it does in real life but basically I get five blanks out of this standard when I'm doing them I'll generally get four what it comes down to is this last little bowl in here usually it's so little it's not worth the effort of removing you notice also that you'll start off with a this is as thick as I want my wall on top and it gets wider on the bottom if you're turning thick pieces which are going to dry and return later you may want to turn out some of this but that's not a method that I use I'm really familiar with but then this is just what works for me okay this naming generally I'll want a blade that comes close to matching or is a little bit tighter radius than the bowl that I'm coring the idea is for the bowl that if it's the same curve or a little less instead of aiming parallel to the edge which would put you through the bottom right about like that you actually want to aim more towards the center of the bowl now if you're using a blade that has a tighter radius this is a little bit extreme on that if you start off going parallel with the edge or at the same angle you will come around and through the bottom and you'll actually have a piece that's very concave down the bottom so one like this you actually go a little bit towards the edge a parallel with it to send you a little bit deeper it is about 12 inches in diameter and about six inches deep first cut on this could have used the small curved blade be kind of minimal and if you notice I'll lose some on the bottom so I didn't use the medium curve first take that core take this one with a small curved blade smoker blade this one with a small curve and the final one with a small curved blade I generally wouldn't turn this one out unless it's a very pretty or very special piece of wood okay this is a No station of something that's more like a vessel I did actually turn one like this and did it without a steady rest the only reason I did it without a steady rest is because I don't have one but this gives you an idea of some of the versatility of this particular tool you cannot core something like this with the other coring systems that are out there so the first core here use the flat curve get you down fairly close to the bottom the second core I take use the medium curve third core I got out of this use a small curve so this is kind of a high pathetically would happen if you have a piece of Burrell your burles tend to be more rounded on the top and what this does is it gives you a lot more depth this way so you can get more pieces out of it I can never come as close as mike mahoney does on his he's had a lot more practice with these but the idea is still starting this is like a medium curved blade for the first two cuts and then switch down to the small curved blade for the last couple ideally get another little bitty one out of there just as on how you mount your bowl and how careful you are and how exact your cuts are okay this is on drifting what I mean by drifting it as your cut progresses instead of following the perfect intended path it always wants to drift to the outside why I'm not exactly sure it just does this it's in the nature of the tool there are several different methods of correcting for this you'll know you're drifting basically you'll see the blade be totally up against the outside of the kerf you can also get some steam and some smoking the thing is is that your blade will have a tighter radius to it than your actual cut does so what you do you come back to the top and your tool rest here and actually cut a little bit off the outside that will open up your cut a little bit more you can come back to the top and also cut a little bit off the inside this is a lot easier to take some off of the inside if you have your gate locked in place which is one of the modifications that I've made another thing you can do is also take and bump the tool rest a little bit to the inside so it's no longer binding against the outside here and moving closer to the inside of the cut it takes some practice and some experience to learn how to correct for this this is normal this is just something you have to learn to deal with this is another one of those things that I've discovered that I have a tendency to do that throws me off track but I still kind of hold my breath when I'm making my entry cut just you know it's a little bit nerve-wracking and found out that what I do is you get in a little bit first and then you kind of go out yes okay I'm in nice and safe and then you start making your curve cut now what this does is your curve tends to look like this straight in first and then you start making the curve now what this does is it leaves you a fulcrum point right here this tends to push you further away from your cut and this is one of the reasons why I recommend coming back to the top and making a cut removing a curve on the inside to help open it up and get rid of that one bump right there you you will notice with your blades if you've had a particularly nasty catch or through heavy-duty use and abuse that they will Bend this is a brand new blade this is one I've had for a couple of years you can notice the difference in the gap right there that's just from heavy use and abuse now the way to fix it basically the bending like that is designed into the blades they Bend rather than break take a blade stick it in a clamp clamp it down good and tight take a good size wrench and put it on the blade and apply some twist pull it back up into shape see how that fits yeah I got a place more getting a lot closer there so they are fixable they're generally not they don't break they Bend I notice on the blade here a little bit of wood buildup this can be shavings this can be from rubbing against the edges a lot of people will take and lubricate their blades you can some people use wd-40 I use one of the no stick stuff for your spray paper for your cooking pans I also will keep a pad handy that I use for wiping on the oil finish that I use on my bowls wrap that on there rub that on there a few times and that will help prevent a lot of that build-up a lot of times I just forget to do is not really that big of a deal a question had always is when you're coring which ones you take first you take the biggest cores out first and work your way down to the smallest ones or start with the smallest ones and work your way back out to the outside now for me if you've noticed the walls of my shop they're covered with wet streaks from turning lots of wet wood wet wood cuts a lot easier I like to turn to finish thickness let them dry and warp and then sand and finish them I like the work shapes so for me it always works best to take the biggest cores first and work my way on down to the center what I do pop the core out finish turning the one bowl that's on there to finish thickness take it off and I'm done with it and I recount the core that I took out flatten the bottom make my finish cut reverse it and core work my way down to the smallest one the one advantage to of going from the outside in they don't mind losing a little tiny bowl on the inside which I will do a lot of times just because they're not worth the effort of cutting unless it's something really special or if I start in the center and work my way towards the outside I risk losing a big bowl or the medium bowl and those are the ones that generally sell better for me now when using this tool it's important to remember that you never have to force it takes very little effort to get it to work if you're having to force it there's something wrong most of the time this is because the blade is drifted off track and the blade is binding inside again to come back to the top correct the kerf on the inside or the outside or bump the tool rest to the middle another thing that will make the blade bind up is if you get a lot of shavings in there I've had them where they're going fine for a while then all of a sudden they plug up and it actually stops the lathe from spinning the only other thing is going to make you have to force it is if you hit a rock or a piece of metal and your blade gets very very dull and that's pretty easy to fix back up just pull it out and resharpen it again - if you're in the bottom of your cut the blades up against the wood it should be cutting but it's not you've got some shavings over the end of your blade pull it out clear it again stick the blade back in so if you can see the little line right here this is where I went in the first time then pull it back out to the top and came in took a little bit off the inside and if you see the dark line here on the on the blank that's where it was rubbing and that's where it was making the smoke and steam okay now while you're coring it is important to have the tool rest set so that the cutter is that Center height on the lathe one way I do this an accessory that I make just to make sure that goes into Center height every single time and I don't have to stop and measure little color this is a piece of end grain turn wood it's made to be about the same diameters my post they're top of my banjo and that'll just give me a little bit better support than the tool rest by itself with a post so end that is on dead center height weight goes between the gates or between the fingers up against the bar when turning and that has it right at Center height you want to be at Center height even a tiny bit above it never below it okay this is for illustration purposes only I have the RPMs down to about 20 and this is why you would never ever attempt to try to core without this in the gates in this poor haze it catches it pulls down you'll have things coming off the lathe you will bend your blades bad words will be said just imagine what this would be like if you're doing it at 500 rpm always use your tool rest now the biggest time-saver with Corinne is when you're actually turning the core is already shaped and about all you really have to do is flatten out the bottom which I like to do with the scraper that just works a little better for me and then you even up the core now the core is always going to be a little bit oval due to when you're coring it you're going through wood fiber which is both in Grain and flat grain and you get a little bit of bounce this way sometimes you can do this with one or two passes of the gouge but I find it easier to use a scraper to even it out and then one pass with a gouge for your finish cut make your finish cut and the recess and reverse it for Corinne you and now for the first pieces of wood that you attempt to core general rule of thumb you want something you don't care a whole heck of a lot about because you are going to make some mistakes and also you want a piece of wood that's not really hard like some Osage or some locust and you don't want something that's real soft and stringy kinda like some of your poplars or some of your soft maples can be your fruit woods are ideal like apple or cherry something green what I've been turning here is some Oregon myrtle wood which technically is a california bay laurel but that's a whole other story but generally something is not too terribly dense because they're a lot more difficult to learn on you know if you notice why as I haven't used the tailstock I generally don't use it while I'm turning bowls and most of the time it's not really necessary when you're coring it can actually get in the way you can use it if you want if you feel more safe with it with your small curved blades it's actually in the way generally I don't need it once you figure out how much of a grip to get on with the tenon or a recess and get a good grip on it and hold it nice and securely it don't need it another thing I didn't show on here or the outboard blades which they have these are generally made if you're coming from the headstock end in towards the bowl or if you have a lathe returning on the outboard side of it they're basically made for that particular orientation the outboard blades generally are not carried in the catalog stores you have to special order them I know to people that do recommend them highly ones Richard graphin he uses them and Steve Russell also uses them I don't just never got them again I do use the recessed bottom or mortise bottom that is my finished bottom I basically just sand it out when I'm done after the bowl has finished drying and warping with the wet wood and the Chuck you can get some metal stains on the bottom of your recess easiest way to get this out turn the bowl upside down on a table put some concentrated lemon juice in it wait about five minutes it will take care of all the metal stains in it now to make sure you're on track one thing you can continually do stop and take a look inside the kerf as you're cutting what it does you can tell especially after you've done it for a while whether you're on track where they're going to be shallow whether you're going to be a little bit deep this takes a lot of practice to learn this to perfect it or you can get the laser now if you notice while I'm pouring this but the only pressure I have on the handle as I'm pulling it towards me a little bit that just helps counter the drifting we don't have to force the tool pointer easy get spout that's pretty close see if we have any wobble yet that's wobbling a little bit that much wobble means you've got about a 3/4 of an inch tenon or so on the end and that will break out fairly easily if you have the laser pointer it's easy to know when the core is almost ready to pop out if you don't have the pointer there's some guesswork involved you can core until the blank pops off by itself which I don't often do mostly just stop the lathe and push on the edge of the core it doesn't move at all you have to pour some more if it moves a little bit you can pop it out or pour a little bit more until it moves easier and then pop it out just barely starting yeah that's moving almost rate of fall it's a little tacky how it comes okay this is a set of natural hedge madrone bowls with lots of wormholes for this one I use the medium blade medium curved blade on the medium setter standard set of blades okay this is another set of green turn madrone bowls five full set using the medium curved blades from the large and the standard set another set of madrone bowls Green turned again using the medium curved blades on the large and the standard set okay this is a two bowl set from a piece of crotch wood from the Norway maple used the flat blades or the large curved blade on the large set the larger Bowl here is about three inches high okay this is a big leaf maple it's a wing Bowl or box combination of the two and used a small curved blade from the mini set to park the lid off lid came off about there okay this is a piece of Oregon myrtle wood or a california bay laurel natural edge Bowl this is what you would use your large curved blades on so you can actually get a couple of cores out of the center of it and this is what the flat blades are good for okay this is a set of Myrtlewood bowls again these bowls are all two inches high and they came from a cylinder that was eight and three-eighths inches long so I got all these bowls have 1/8 inch cylinder one up I made a lampshade out of and then an extra two little ones so a total seven bowls from 1/8 inch tall cylinder pay for sharpening your scrapers first thing take it to a stone rep off the old bird take it up to the grinding stone a nice fresh new bird nice clean edge sharpening gouges I like the swept background this is easiest way to do this jig put it through this is my depth stop they get the exact same measure every time tighten it up up to the pivot point nice clean edge this is one of my specialized tools for going across the bottom of the bowl your tool rest gets in the way especially on deeper bowls and your Irish grandeur sweat backgrounds won't play make it this one is ground almost 85 degrees 90 degrees you go across the bottom of the bowl with the gouge being straight in line here this is not a spindle roughing gouge which has a square or straight across profile the wings are ground back a bit giving a slightly curved profile another tool I use which will do the exact same cut this is a scraper more of a quarter round profile on top ride the bevel across the bottom in a shear scraping GLE give you a real nice clean test that's first part one wedge here's another wedge that's it for a chainsaw that's the pith that has to come out now back to the man you make a lot of bowls you're going to have to sand a lot you want good dust collections they don't end up with it all over the shop and this is the sanding hood that I came up with this is a 55-gallon food great drum the nice thing about them as the white plastic it's kind of translucent I do have one board on the bottom which holds it in two ways two bolts through here that go to a little bracket that I put on where they have the old safety shield was nobody ever uses a hole for the main spindle dust collection is more up on top my death was down on the bottom would tend to suck up a lot of sandpaper and rags and stuff like that this also gets a piece of plastic or acrylic over it pole mounts inside what I found out about this as I can sit here and put a six hour days worth of sanding black walnut in little dust on the front of me nothing on my glasses nothing up my nose little catch there tripped it safety feature yeah restart button does more than I do that okay have to retighten that up right to the bottom

Channel: robohippy

Views: 34,057

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Id: xk-Z-scS84w

Length: 68min 35sec (4115 seconds)

Published: Mon Dec 09 2013