Richard Raffan — your first go on a wood lathe.

hello I'm Richard raffon I know when you're new to Turning you often have wonderful ideas that you're going to make a great big bowl or you're going to make some teeny little something rather but whatever you're going to do it really pays just to spend some time just making shavings um usually with a block of wood not unlike this between centers on a lathe and uh this video is going to be an absolute basic introduction to getting wood on the lathe and making your first cuts so when you get started you want to find something like this is a bit of Oregon Pine and this is a branch of I can't remember what it was now Ash I think but it's fairly green this stuff is bone dry but they're both basically firewood and very good to start with so and we're going to put this blank between centers the spur drive at this end and the tail Center here now I've learned to do these things by eye with practice but when you first start to find Center of this you draw this is fairly Square so you can draw the two diagonals and that will give you the center now the other end I'm going to do by our or I'll do this Empire that end uh goes against these the spike in the middle and to find Center here I'm just going to eyeball between the two pieces there and whoops I need to tighten up the Tails Center tail stock I found Center by eye there and then I roll it over 90 degrees and find it again and I just need to move it very slightly to there I think and I can check that by holding a pencil on the end grain and just spinning the wood around so that's not too far off now the moment the more you do that by eye the better you get at it and I can tell you even after 50 was it 53 years of turning I still get that nice little flush of pleasure when I get it right yet again right now next thing is to consider is the grain Direction so this is Oregon Pine much used for building in Australia and this piece is about 60 years old and the main thing with the Turning is you need to know about grain Direction so the grain here is you can see the growth rings running that way now in order to get a clean cut you need to go from the larger to the smaller diameter draw the light sharpening a pencil if you're sharpening a pencil you know you go that way you do not go from the lead back so the main the first thing we're going to do is to take a series of cuts to reduce take the square away and to make the thing round I'm going to start off with what is a half inch spindle gouge now you need to make sure spin the wood by hand so that make sure it's clear of the rest of the rest height needs to be somewhere probably just below Center the most important thing is for you to be comfortable when it comes to holding the tool I like to have my right hand fairly near the tool ferrule that's the bit which stops the wood splitting rather than the end of the handle because if I have my hand near the end of the handle it just has to move so much further whereas up here it's a much more economical movement and I keep the handle into my side so when it comes to turning tool is going to go on the rest the bevel which is the shiny bit underneath on the bottom of the tool that goes against the wood then you raise the handle until you get a little bit of a shaving a little bit of dust coming off the edge and then you can move the tool forward [Music] foreign now I'll have a closer look at that so that cut is nice and clean so here we go again so the tool goes on the rest the bevel heel comes on the wood raise the handle until there's a bit of dust and then you can go forward with the cut now you want to try and keep this hand in contact with the rest because it's from that point that you're really manipulating the tool so this hand is going to be with the tool blade if you're just standing back without your hand on the rest everything is then kind of stemming from your feet and you're inclined to rock around a bit so you just don't have the tool control that you do if your hand is up here now your hand can be underneath foreign [Music] looks very nice in a photograph but it also means that you can get the shavings in your face because you have your hand over the top the tools against the knuckle of the bottom of your little finger pushes it forward and when you get a bit more experience you can stick your fingers up and stop the shavings coming into your face [Music] now this is a half inch spindle guard which I've only had one tool this would probably be it because you can do almost everything with this tool if you absolutely have to next we're going to look at what's called a continental roughing gouge this is quite a large one but they do come in different sizes I've got a an older one here which is this is from the 1930s and does the same thing bevel goes onto the wood raise the handle and then move it forward not a common shape these days whereas this one is and this would be my favorite tool for roughing down roughing down is taking the square section to round so tool on the rest bevel shoulder on the wood raise the handle and then move it forward [Music] thank you so once you've got the piece to round you can then just really just play around with the tool and see what you can do with it so this is really a roughing tool just for taking something from the square section down to round now I can use the nose foreign cut and I'm going to get another bit of wood in a minute which will show you that better but that is not a particularly smooth surface as you can see but if I can get the wood coming onto an angle then it'll be much smoother but we'll see that much better in the uh in the next piece of Timber I'm going to use so we'll leave that one and uh go to a piece of wet of green Timber stuff which was growing only uh a few weeks ago so on this one we'll start off with the with the Continental roughing gouge so tool on the rest number one devil can ride on the wood then you bring the tool up raise the handle until there's a shaving coming off you hear the note change and then move forward [Music] now if I'm doing that with a half inch spindle garage what the half inch spindle guards give you is more practice of course you can't take as big a cut so you have to take more of them I can go back the other way now if you only have a deep-fruited bowl gouge which is what this is it's basically the same thing tool on the wrist and bevel on the wood roll it over until you get a shaving and where you go foreign [Music] just have a look at the differences between the peeling and cutting moving the rest a little bit closer so if I'm using the nose of the tool what I get coming off the uh off the wood as you can see is is a roll of Shaving whereas if I'm cutting from with the edge at a bit of an angle I'm going to get a curly shaving which comes off which is really a slice now this wood turns a lot better than the other one therefore there isn't so dramatica difference between the two surfaces now the constant in wood turning is the wood is always coming down and so if you can manage to keep the portion of the edge which is cutting at around 45 degrees to the wood as it comes down onto the Chisel onto the edge you'll get a curly shaving whereas if I have the nose a little flat section against the wood what you get is a roll and so when you're roughing down it doesn't really matter if the surface isn't that good using the open that's nice and fast but if I want to get a much better surface then that angle in there is at 45 degrees to the wood as it comes on to the edge [Music] so on a smaller scale with the half inch spindle garage it's about uh 14 millimeters you can start trying to do coves a beads rather where you just round it over and you begin to roll the tool in the direction again [Music] [Music] the other way [Music] on the side and then you can roll it up again now if I try and go uphill the wood is going to be on an unsupported Edge there's spacing under here and it will catch and if you haven't had a catch it's one of those which scares the daylight out of people but you need to come to terms with them [Music] we've got a whole separate video on catch it on catches so I advise you to watch have a look at that so once you start making shapes just see what you can do with this tool if you roll it right on its side [Music] we can make a kind of v-groove so the tool starts right on its side the flute is sticking that way the handle is dropped so that when you start the cut to basically bring the handle up which pivots The Edge into the wood then the bevel is rubbing the bit you've just cut which I'll mark with a dark line and then you can ease the door forward looking at it from the other side this bevel is lined up with the direction I want to go which is straight in the whole secret to Turning fine turning and Tool control is that you are not here to push a tool into the wood you're here to let the wood come to the tool and all you have to do is hold the edge at the right angle so it's get sliced the timber gets sliced as it comes past the edge thank you so you just go on and on and on track seeing this Until It Breaks which will and we'll just get it down to that level I'll do it with the big gouge [Applause] get that vibration that humming noise just there and can't repeat that's a sign that you're just pushing too hard so I'm going to be going down here until the wood breaks because you can then see what happens [Music] I was getting very thin now that noise that is a proper catch just me being a bit careless [Music] come on down it's getting very soon this is and you'll hear a vibrating sound can I get it when I want it though it's getting very thin so if I push here it's going to break and it's generally not a big deal it's just going to Rattle and fall like that it's not the same as having catch with a ball where it can come off and hit you in the face

Channel: Richard Raffan

Views: 74,139

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Id: 87I1i6TYC08

Length: 19min 38sec (1178 seconds)

Published: Tue Feb 28 2023