Controlling the Bowl Gouge

today i thought we'd take a look at how you make a bowl gouge cut correctly how you direct it to create the shapes you want to create and to leave a smooth cut in its wake this is a henry taylor super flute bowl gouge been around since 1976 and here you have a spindle gouge we can't use a spindle gouge for face plate work in face plate work we have the grain running across the piece like this that's the center of the tree these are the annular rings right here and if we were to cut with this gouge in the way we normally cut like this it would catch right in this area and rip the grain actually right out of the piece and maybe rip the tool out of your hand or break the handle or rip the piece off the face plate maybe all of the above who knows so you really can't use this in the way that you would with a spindle and you have to go to a bowl gown here is the bowl gouge we just described notice that it does have quite a different flute this has a very shallow flute the spindle gouge that is a radius of a circle and the bowl gouge has a deep either u-shaped or parabolic shaped flute with a very different grind on the nose we explained the grinds in last month's zoom session so this month we're going to look at how we make this cut and the way we want to so to turn the outside of a bowl here we would turn our lathe on and we present this gouge level on the rest that is the whole gouges parallel to the floor and we're going to touch down like that and get it cutting we've got the flute in the start of any bowl gouge cut pointing to about 930 to the left or if you were to the right it would be about 0.230 and we get it going like this and now we just turn that until it comes sweet and now simply pushing on the handle along the shaft will make it scoot along on the nose bevel and go in the direction we want it to cut we we change directions with a bowl gouge if we want to cut deeper we need to swing it towards you and now it's cutting a deeper cut and if we wanted to cut shallower we'd rock up like this and come around and continue right up this wall and again if everything's right you only need downward pressure on this on the rest all the control is in this hand so the start is 9 30 or 2 30 and the scrape cut once it gets going twisting the gouge clockwise on an outside cut or counterclockwise on an inside cut makes it come sweet do not try to pull it with your left hand the control is in the right hand a good technique is to simply put two fingers on the gouge like this and now push with your right hand and it will cut just as nice as pie and to flare this rim we would just move the handle to the right and we could flare it out and create a reverse shape to cut the really the bottom curve through the s curve of most bowls you start way over here like this and now i have to come right around like this bringing the handle towards you and i'll go right up the wall i've now turned this bowl around on the chuck by scraping a recess in the base and using an expansion hold and we're going to now hollow it out and it is easier to do the hollowing because you've got to start here for a hollowing cut and come all the way around like this and an uneven surface will make it more difficult to start so a good first step is simply to take a bowl gouge like this and just cut right across here and create a level surface there i'm going to break that edge because it can cut you and i'm going to start here pointing that nose bevel the direction i want to cut whoops got away from me scrape cut until i get in there always and i turn this counterclockwise as i come around there we go i'm scraping in i now have a ledge for this to register on i'll turn it a little like that until it becomes sweet and now i'm swinging the handle around to me to come across the bottom and i have to continue to turn it counterclockwise as i come down to a very small piece and i'm always on the center line throughout this cut i'm now hollowed out to i have a pretty even wall thickness i'm still a bit thick in the base i probably could go down in here take another cut or two down in here so we'll now start working this like a quarry wall we're going to cut down like that always and feel how our wall is it's growing thicker as we go down so we're going to come to final fault wall fixes here pretty good i'll now take this down a little further like that this gouge needs sharpening that's why it's slipping all right i've sharpened that bowl gouge and you'll see that it starts much better now cuts much better cuts quieter getting a long ways for my rest so swinging that in like that help a little bit nice even wall thickness get some more out of here [Music] very even now sticking in we're going to come to about here [Music] very nice and you see we have a pretty darn good surface finish and look at the difference between the surface finish here and after i sharpened the gouge right in the rest of the way in there need to straighten out that bottom just a little bit here you notice i'm twisting that anti-clockwise as i go across there so that's the trick to using the bowl gouge and directing it just remember that quality they cut is by turning it and direction of the cut is by swinging it and that you're always rubbing that bevel right behind the tip on the cut and pushing along the axis of the tool is what drives it if you try to move it with your left hand which is a natural thing to do you will not get a smooth cut you will not get something you're proud of so a well-presented gouge used properly will just give you terrific results and as you can see i've done this in real time and pretty darn fast so uh give it a try give some of these techniques a try the big thing is look at our previous month's video on how to sharpen these gouges correctly and get that under your belt so that you start out with a properly sharpened gouge next month i think we'll take a look at spindle gouges and roughing out gouges and how we can do some spindle turning and get similar results to this of taking plenty of material off fast when we need to but getting terrific results when we need fine detail thanks for visiting me today and don't forget to take a look at our other videos on the youtube channel and take a look at our website we will be offering courses again starting probably in july of this year come take a course with me and don't forget to take a look at my book the third edition of the late book which came out this time last year and is the third edition and is available on our website for 21 bucks post paid to your door thanks for visiting i'll see you next month

Channel: Conover Workshops

Views: 38,036

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Id: JSiImiE923s

Length: 12min 25sec (745 seconds)

Published: Mon Mar 01 2021