Hello, I'm Charles Bell. Welcome to the second in our series of Woodturning Masterclasses. I'm with the master himself, Allan Batty Hello Charles. Allan, in this class we are going to talk about the skew chisel. Now I know that for many turners, the skew is a tool that people are frightened of for some reason. Could you perhaps explain it? I think it's really a misunderstanding, they don't know how to present the tool to the work correctly and they're frightened of the consequences if they do get it incorrect and it snatches into the work and bites But it is a valuable tool? It's the most versatile tool in a spindle turners kit, if it's used correctly and that's the purpose of this program to get rid of any misconceptions. So you've got quite a piece of formidable piece of metal there Allan, perhaps you'd like to describe it? Yes, this is a two inch wide skew, machined in a skewed angle as you can see, hence its name skew. It's ground on two faces, both sides leading up to a cutting edge here. And those grinding angles, are they critical? Yes and no. There are many different suggested angles to choose and I suggest at this point that we go to a diagram and it will clear up any misconceptions and misunderstandings on what angle you should grind your own particular tool at. Okay, let's do that. I've heard of angles of angles from 80 degrees to less than 25, this tends to confuse students as to select the angle for their own use. I've selected three different angles in common use, and how I would view them. 55 degrees is toward the hardwood end of the scale, if you go beyond 55 degrees to say 80 degrees, then this restricts the free movement of the tool. For example, when turning a bead with a raised detail on either side, the bevel will bottom out before the cut can be completed. 25 degrees is toward the softwood side of the scale. The edge of the tool becomes too thin, and is vulnerable to chipping if it's used on the harder wood. It is for these reasons that I work with a grinding angle of about 40 degrees. This allows me to work with both soft and hardwoods, but still permits access to beads with raised details. So that's cleared that up Allan, I understand about the angles now. That's good. So now what I'm going to do, I'm going to show you how to use the tool, but first of all, we've got to turn square shoulders or pummels as they're called and I've deliberately colored this wood black, so that as the cuts progress, you'll actually see them much more clearly against the white, soft wood as we cut through. I'm going to cut 6 principle cuts into the square shoulders and I'm going to start with this one here and it's a slightly curved cut as you'll notice like that. And where I start is what surprises people. I start about a 1/4" inch ahead of the line and as each cut goes deeper than its predecessor, it works back to meet the line, so that by the time I've reached the depth, I'll be exactly on the line. But before we do that cut, let's look at how we present the skew chisel to the work. In this particular case, I'm looking at a clock so I present the tool at eleven o'clock off the rest like that. So it'll be leaned over at about eleven O'clock. So it goes to the rest, the handle goes low, so that's the cuts in progress. I lift the handle and push the tool forward so it slices through the wood at the same time. So I've leaned the tool at eleven O'clock, the left hand grinding angle must be brought around to the right direction of travel, so I need to move my body around. So now as you can see, the left hand grinding angle is in direction of the curve. But where I need to start is up here, so as each cut goes deeper, and I'll move back a cut at a time, until I reach the line. Let the lathe build up to full speed, put the handle low and lift the handle and push the tool forward at the same time. Now what you can see is the tool moving back along the rest. And what you can actually see, I'm following the predetermined path there of these marks. And I'm not quite meeting together yet, but I should meet on the line by moving back towards it. Now as I lift the handle, what I actually do is I take the handle around to the right, so it so it follows a curve there. And now we should be on to the line. So let the lathe stop. And we're exactly on the line, but what you can see is there is no torn grain. We don't even need 400 grade abrasive paper on there. It's nice and clean. As the first of six cuts, there's the opposite hand to that, which I am going to do here. And again, it's exactly the same. The only difference is it's in reverse now. And I'm going to start in the same manor, 1/4" inch ahead of the line, each cut is going to go deeper than its predecessor. And it's going to form a curve the opposite way. Again the tool handle is presented low, tool leaned over to one O'clock, right hand grinding angle brought down to the right direction of travel in this case, and again the lifting with the handle and gently bring the handle around to make my body, so that we form a nice, gentle curve and we're working back to meet the line again and we're almost there, last cut now. And there what you can see, is the cut is actually complete. No torn grain. Not even a disturbed fiber on the surface and you can see the purpose of painting it black now. You can identify the shapes as we're going. It's much easier. That's two of six cuts done, we're going to introduce the third now A little shamper cut, dominantly we use the long point of the skew for these cuts here, but now I'm going to use the long point and the heel. And you'll see the action. Long point first, to form the cut into the surface there. And now the heel of the tool is brought into action. I'll just take the cut down there. And what this forms is a small sham-fer on the surface of the work there. It wants to be a little bit deeper, you can see a mark from the skew, we want to go just a little bit deeper. I'll show you a combination cut we conclude with this one when we come through with the six cuts. Just a little bit deeper there, I'll do that now. That's it. And that's three of six cuts done. And you can see the sham-fer cut there now. The fourth cut is a difficult one to master. It's an absolutely square cut, and if it's not left absolutely square, it looks dreadful. If it's undercut it looks awful, if it's overcut it looks awful. But first of all, we must give ourselves access to this cut, and the way that's achieved is we put a v cut to the way side of the line there. Now to achieve that v cut to the way side of the line, what we actually do is we first of all present the tool at twelve o'clock there, The left hand grinding angle is brought around to the direction of travel which is the straight line there. Then I lean the tool over to one o'clock, back to twelve, over to one and I rock her between the two positions till I form a v cut and that is to the way side of the line. The purpose of that will become obvious once we've completed it. Twelve o'clock first, just go in and form a little cut. Then go over to one o'clock, one o'clock again, one o'clock again, back to twelve. Again notice the handle. I'm lifting up in an arc. It'll help the tool to slice through the fibers of the wood there. And now we've achieved our v cut to the way side of the line and the purpose will become obvious. What we can see is we now have access to the line without anything to impead the tool's progress as it moves forward. So we cant just gently skim back until we meet the line, by setting our angle there in the direction of travel, but the tool's just past twelve o'clock to the top and then it goes down. And again by the lifting up, we slice through the fibers without tearing. And what you'll see is we've got a lovely clean shoulder without any torn fibers whatsoever. This surface is immaculate, there's no torn grain whatsoever. We've now achieved four of six cuts. One, two, three, four. For the fifth and sixth cuts, I'll need to give myself a clearance and I'll introduce the parting tool for this but we'll come back to this tool in a minute or two. First of all, I'm just going to form a small groove to give me access for the fifth and sixth cuts in there. The fifth cut, I'm still on the skew chisel, but now instead of using the long point which I've used prodominantly through all the cuts there, I'm going to use the center of the blade to the heel in a rolling action. Start on the corner first and just work around cutting down. When I finish the cut, I finish right from the tip itself. So only the tip cuts at the conclusion of the cut there. And again, what you'll see is an absolutely polished surface from the tool. Absolutely clean, but I'll explain how we're achieving that in a minute or two. But just before we do, we've got a little bit of torn grain left there, so I always take the parting tool and go back in and just clean that up. Never leave anything like that. It just spoils the work. That's it there. And now I need to introduce another tool for the sixth cut. Because the sixth cut is interesting. What we're going to do is a curve, followed by a round. It's a gentle curve followed by a round. Now the way we achieve this, I like to imagine when we use this tool, It's like pool player using his bridge hand for his cue. All he does is guide the cue, he doesn't grip it so it stops it from progressing forward. We do the same with this tool. All we do is locate the tool in position on the rest, and we guide it with that hand, but we don't grip it. So it still allows the tool freedom of movement. Now it's the scooping action first, to start the cut there. On it's side, to the lower swoop. Now it rolls over. So the swooping action, rolls over and the handle goes around to the right, so that the bevel follows the work all the way through the cut. And now what you'll see is we have the classic cut in there, but again at the bottom of the cut it's not clean and sharp because this is a gouge and it's a curved cut, so I always go back with the skew at that point just to put a fine line in the work. And it just sharpens up the work and brings in into clarity. So now we have the six principle cuts achieved in our corners there. All the different types of cuts here. But I said we can actually combine the cuts, adding one to another. For example here, what you can see is we've combined two cuts. We've put the shamfer in and then we've brought the other that's given you a nice classical shape around here. It's used a lot in staircases in these types of work when you wanted a mortise and tenon rail in there. So obviously you could bring your turning way down the square without interfering too much with the mortises. And that was a nice classic look as you can see. That's how the six cuts are achieved into square corners. Now when you take it down to the round, but the only gouge we used for this was the half round gouge like this one. It was ground square across and as we use it, I'll explain its reason for being ground square across its angle and how it's used and why we only use the half round. This is an essential tool for between center work, spindle turning. This tool will quickly reduce square timber to round. Most turners favor two half circles with this gouge with the cutting edge ground square across, which allows all the edge to utilized as you will see. I tend to grind the roughing out gouge at a longer angle of about 30 degrees, as this works much better on softer woods. If you're working with hard woods all the time, then retain the more common angle of 45 degrees. So where do we begin with the gouge? We're going to work from the tailstock back to meet the square, but before we do that we'll just discuss one point about the toolrest height. Normally we keep the rest on center height of the lathe, with the exception on one cut, which I'll discuss when we get to the petition. We keep the rest about 1/8" away from the work. At the moment we're working a 2" square piece of wood. It would normally run about 2,000 RPM. So now with our gouge, we're actually going to work from the tailstock back to the square, but when we work that way we cut from the center of the gouge there, to just below center in that position there. When we reverse the gouge and come the other way, we cut exactly the other side, lower there. So that's the safe section of the gouge to cut with. If we cut on the top section, what you can see is it'll pull over on us. So we cut on the lower section of the gouge, working from the tailstock end. Let the lathe build up to speed and make sure the tool is on the rest before it touches the work. Lift until we get the cut, then move along and you can see exactly where it's cutting. Just below center, you can actually see the shaving mark there where it's just cutting below center. Move along and I keep moving back a little bit farther every time, so I'm removing the square at the same time. And now you'll see the purpose of the half round gouge, because as I rotate the gouge over now we have exactly the same cutting action and I can cut right into the corner of the work here. And I roll the gouge right onto its side to complete the cut right into the corner there. Right over into the corner and back. And that's all square and roughed out and it is rough at the moment, we're gonna improve that surface, but before we do improve that surface with the skew chisel, I want to discuss a very important point about the principle use of the tool. Another suggestion I've often used with apprentices is an old fashioned smoothing plane. If we set it an inch below, what will happen to the wood when we try to take a shaving off a piece of wood, what will happen Charles? Absolutely nothing. Not going anywhere are we? Set your plane iron exactly right. As you take the shaving off the piece of wood, what part of the plane sits on the wood as it goes along? The base or sole of the plane. In turning, the sole of our plane is the grinding angle here. This is the sole of our plane. And here's the point. If we lift that off the work at any one point, it's equivalent to trying to plane an inch below the plane. It won't go anywhere and all the tool will try to do is dig in and kick its way into the work. Now this is how important this bevel is. Set your plane iron exactly right, take a shaving off the piece of wood. Your better woods are about a mile long. Would you settle for a couple hours of hand planing? Well here's a point, you'll see how important it is. How far would you get along that mile if your plane iron was an inch below the surface? You wouldn't get anywhere. We'll this is a two inch diameter piece of timber traveling at 2,000 RPM. Approximately three minutes and you've covered a mile. If that bevel comes off the work at any one time within that mile, all you've done is lost the cutting edge and the tool is trying to kick and bury its way into the work. The way we find the bevel is by starting the lathe, lift the tool until the cut takes place and that establishes the bevel on the work and we move forward like that. With those thoughts in mind, we are now going to improve the surface with the skew chisel with exactly the same principle, the bevel riding the surface of the work. And what we've got to do with the skew is, we're actually going to use the skew in a couple of functions here. One is to clean up the surface along here, but the other is to clean down the end grain here. Now when we clean down the end grain, we use the long point of the skew, not the heel. Why do you use that? We'll if you use the heel, what would happen is I would lose visual contact. I would. I would have no contact with the tip of the blade. By using the tip, I can see the cut to completion. But here's the secret to this cut, what I do is I present the tool at 12 O'clock off the rest. The left hand grinding angle is brought around to the direction of travel, which is straight down the piece of wood. But at this point, I lean the tool now one minute past twelve, so that leaves a little clearance at the top. If I kept the tool at exactly 12 o'clock, what you'd see would happen is that top edge would just catch and throw into the work. So by leaving the tool at one minute past twelve, but the lower portion of the bevel rubs along as it goes down. I'll do the cut two or three times, so you'll actually see it in action. Start with the handle low again. Line up the bevel and I just lift the handle and push down on the cut. What you can see is that little gap at the top of the blade as it goes down to stop that snatchy area there. See how it's working at that point. And that's left the end grain surface absolutely clean. But if we go in at exactly twelve o'clock, you can see exactly what's going to happen, should you snatch over and pull the tool into the work. We are now going to plane the surface, and do you remember I said we are going to leave the rest at center height? This is the only time I interfere with the rest. I normally wouldn't do this, but if you're just learning, it pays to just lift your rest up a little and that gives you a better planing action in your early days. And what we're going to do is search for the bevel in the traditional way, but before we start the cut, there's a couple of principles to get this correct. We're going to work within a couple lines there. I get that on the work. We're going to present only the lower section of the blade, across there. That gives us a perfect pairing option with the bevel in contact. Now imagine if I cut towards the top of the tool? Bang! You see how the top point goes in. So the easiest way to visualize how you plane with this tool, we search for the bevel by bringing the tool down into the cut, but we only cut with the lower section of the blade. So each time you go to plane with this, if you took a little imaginary wooden wedge behind the work like that, as you plane, that'll set the tool in exactly the right position. You can't start at the end, there's no support for the bevel. So what I do now, I drop the heel of the tool, I lift till I get the cut which is there. It's cutting in the lower section of the blade as you can see as we come along. And then cut into the tip right in the corner at that point. Now I can now go back the other way, because I have wood underneath the tool. But you see, I couldn't stop again, there's not support for the bevel. So by coming in there slowly, search for the bevel, feel the shiner peeling on the work. And right into the corner there. And you can see the action that the tool's left a perfectly clean surface without any need for sanding. But that's the principle. Start a little bit inboard, so you can find your bevel, search for it. And you can see the reason for not starting at the end and you can see the reason for tilting the tool slightly to the outboard end to stop this top edge from catching on this edge here. I'm now going to reintroduce the parting tool that we've already used Charles. We've discussed the bevel should rub the work, but this is one tool if we go in with the bevel rubbing, we'll end up with a disaster. And you'll observe it as we take place. As I draw the cut down and search for the bevel, what you'll see is we've ended up with torn grain on the surface of the work, which is totally unacceptable There's a couple of ways we could have solved this problem. We could have gone in with two fine lines with the skew chisel, which would've given us a clean entry. But you don't want to handle two tools for the one job. If we enter this tool incorrectly by taking it into a scraping action, then right up the groove and then the bevel into play then, we'll remove the problem of torn grain. But go in there, ride up, bring the bevel in and what you'll obverse is we now have no torn grain. So by merely presenting the tool in a trailing action, then drawing up and completing the cut that way, we don't tare the grain. This is just a wide parting tool and we can use this in a peeling cut to remove the waste in between the two grooves there. By searching for the bevel there, lift the tool handle and push forward. And it just quickly removes the waste in between the two grooves. But what I want you to observe is the torn grain that's taken place here and here from the parting tool. The only way to resolve that problem is exactly what we did with the endgrain down here. Use the skew chisel. But do you remember what we did when we went down here? We presented the bevel in direction of travel, but we leaned the tool at one minute past twelve to stop the top edge catching. We're going to do the exactly the same here down this side. Lower the handle so we come to an arching action there and just lift the tool forward to the completion of the cut like that. Now at this side, we've got to lean the tool at one minute to twelve, bring the bevel around into the direction of travel there, and repeat the cut that way. Now it's obvious that I can't plane inside with that skew because it's too wide, so I'll go to a narrower skew now and use it in exactly the same planing action as we did before by using the lower section of the blade and we plane along the surface there to remove any torn grain. And what you'll notice now, we should have clean cutting both in the endgrain here and on the top surface here which we have. But just a tip when you are using your parting tool, what it pays you to do is form the groove slightly wider than the tool itself by going in by half the cut, half width of the blade. There. Now going by half the width of the blade again and we go down in a series of steps like that. So as the cuts in progress, it's wider than the tool, so it cannot jam. So what we did, we went in by half the width of the tool, and we went down in a series of steps. And what that gave us was a groove wider than the tool. The tool can't be kicked back on us as it traps within the work. There's nothing to trap the tool. Now remember that very first cut we did into the square spindle? You couldn't see from the square corner going around. I'm going to repeat that cut here now but as I repeat the cut, we'll just refresh on what we did. I'll lean the tool over to eleven o'clock. I brought the left hand grinding angle around to the direction of travel which is over there and I lowered the handle to get the arc of the peeling cut like that. I start on the corner. Don't try to remove too much timber at once, let the lathe build up to speed and make sure you're on the rest and lift the handle and arc forward. It's that lift that's a secret. And again, if the bevel is in contact with the surface of the work it should polish the work at the point of cut which it has done there. When we talk about the bevel rubbing, people have different ideas or impressions of pressure. The pressure I'm applying is exactly the same as a snow shovel on snow. It just slides across the surface. If you press too hard, you can actually do more damage than you can solve. So what we're going to do is, I'm going to go down this little disc of wood, for me the side by just slicing down gently and letting the bevel just slide over the surface of the work. Now you can see if I used excessive pressure here this would collapse. The tool is just gliding down the surface of the work. And then we'll just cut the ring loose there with the tip of the skew, that's it. And now using the parting tool as a small skew chisel in that confined area we just clean up that surface like that. Now the purpose of that little ring was to show you if I used excessive pressure that would have collapsed as we'd cut it. But also you can see the clean finish we've got with the skew chisel, but the results from the parting tool is torn grain. So what I'm going to do is clean up down here with the skew again, but again remember what we did. I leaned the skew at one minute to twelve, I brought the right grinding angle in this case down this side of the cut, and just tilt the tool back to this top edge so it can't catch on the work surface as it goes down. And we just cut down there and clean up any torn grain that might be on the surface of the work. And that concludes that little section as well. We're at the final stages Charles, and that only leaves us three cuts left. A v cut, a cove and a round. What we'll do, I'll start with the v cut first and I'll establish three lines on the surface of the work. You'll imagine that the center line is the bottom of the v. We're going to start with the skew, I'm a right handed turner. We start with the handle low again and I bring the tool around to 1 o'clock and I start at the left hand side and I just take gentle cuts, each one going slightly deeper than the last. What you can actually see is the v being roughly formed there. Now as you'll notice, the right hand side is now finished and the v is roughly formed on the left hand side. But it only leaves me one final cut to slice down there to clean up that surface. So I only need to move once there and I move across, line up the bevel now, leaning the tool at 11 o'clock and slice down and that completes your v cut. And again no torn fibers. We'll go into a cove or hollow now and this seems to create people problems, but there is an easy way to overcome it. We'll set the parameters of the cove first on the hollow with the gouge there. That'll be the outside of the cove. And when you use a gouge what we do is we actually use it the same way you'd use a spoon. You take the spoon into the contents of the bowl, you turn it onto its back and you draw the contents and withdraw it. We do the same with the gouge. We work in a scooping action in exactly the same way working from both side down through the bottom. When we reach the bottom, we'll remove the contents. Don't try to work up the other side, you'll only work from one side down to the center. Final cut down this side now, conclude from the bottom and then in from the other side. Little bit more from that side. And just blend the cut together. That's it. And that's your cove or hollow. It only leaves us one last cut which is a bead now. And what we'll do, we'll establish the width of the beads before we roll them and then I'll show you which tools we can select to do that. We'll just establish the base. Setting the tool at 1 o'clock follow v cut there, aim at eleven and that's going to be the width of our bead there. We'll make a second bead here. What I'm actually going to do, I'm going to roll two half beads on the end here, two full beads here to show you how we use the tools and which tools we use and why. The gouge is one of my favorite tools to roll a bead, but here what you can see is we would meet a restriction before the gouge could complete the cut, we'd destroy the next detail and the gouge would snatch because it's got no access to the cut. Where you'd only normally use the gouge, where we've got access, for example when there's a flat along side the edge of the bead. I'll roll a half bead on this end so you can actually see the action with the gouge and we take the gouge on its side and we take it round to form the bead there. And as long as we've got access with the gouge, the gouge will roll an extremely good bead. But we do need access with the gouge and you can see where we've had a flat along side there, so there's nothing into the tools movement unlike here. So now we can't use the gouge there. We've got a choice of two tools here. We can use either a beading and parting tool, which is ground square across. That's the only difference to the skew, the skew is ground at skewed angle and this is ground square across, but the principle of using these tools is identical What I'll do, I'll use the square across one first and then I'll introduce the skew. When we use the square across one, we only cut with one edge or the other. We only cut with the tip note the part of the tool as the tool rotates round. Now the real secret is to finish in the vertical plane there. Now a little tip that helps people when they first learn to roll beads is to raise your rest just a little above center height. Normally we don't bother, but in your early days it just helps, there's not so much movement. And all you do is roll the tool over, cutting with the very tip of the tool. And as it goes around, only the tip of the tool is doing the cutting. When we finish at the bottom, we must finish vertical like that. If we don't finish vertical, the tool will snatch. Same with the opposite side, again only the tip of the tool does the cutting. We roll the tool over and when we reach the bottom, the tool must be cutting vertically there. You see if we stop short of that position, the tool with snatch with its cutting edge jammed there and at the top. So as long as you finish vertical, you're in the safe position. Now when you roll a bead for the first time, getting the bead evenly matched is difficult, so it helps sometimes if you just strike a line in the center of the bead and try to leave the line on. So you'll get a more regular shaped bead that way and you shape around the same tool look. And down at the bottom right into there and then roll here to the side look over. Again the only part of the tool that's doing the cutting is the tip. And there's your bead complete there. We can now roll with the skew and here the choice is yours, whether you use the long point or the heel. You can use either or both whichever your choice is. I'll use the long point to start with and then I'll use the heel. We'll go around with the long point there and again it's exactly the same position once it's vertically there. And we can use the heel in exactly the same manor going around the bead down to the conclusion of the cut there. And that would roll your beads in perfectly safe. My choice is for a narrower tool rather than a wide one, because as I use the wide one, as the tool comes into vertical plane, my thumb is tending to push the tool back. It's much more convenient to use the narrow one, because as I conclude the cut, my thumb rides on top of the tool and pushes it down into its safe zone and it's absolutely safe that way. And that concludes all the cuts we're going to do between centers. We'll now take it into a practical project. We'll thanks very much Allan. That's certainly showing that the skew chisel is a versatile tool isn't it? It's not just something to be feared. It's not just versatile, but it's safe as well isn't it. So, let's get on with a project then. This is a table leg that I'm going to reproduce on this piece particular piece of wood Charles. But you'll notice it's already set out, but to understand how the table leg works, we need to understand why it's set in a particular manor. What we have, we have two different types of legs here and what you'll notice is a subtle difference between the two If you notice one foot actually comes off the flat here and the other foot comes off the corner here, so it differs slightly. It's the setting out that arrives to this and it's the application that determines which foot or off center position we go to. For example, the one I'm going to make would be for a circular table because the foot actually comes off the flat. But this one would serve the purpose for a chair where the corner comes off the corner. So the way we set it out, what I'm actually going to do is show you how we've set this one out which would be for the circular table. And you'll see the subtle differences between the two. The measurements remain the same. What we've done, we've arrived at our foot position here by measuring from the true center to half way across and arrive at the center point there between the two. We strike that line onto the top surface and when we've struck that line onto the top surface, you'll notice we're half way across the bottom there. But the top, you'll notice it's different. And how we arrive at this measurement is critical. What governs that measurement there is actually where this shoulder falls, which intersects the two sections of the leg. And what we do is, we measure half way across here and we strike a line from that point to the halfway point there to the top. And then that arrives at the true off center position there. So when the leg is put into its outer center position, it'll run in truth at one point so we can blend the cuts together. Now the only difference between the two legs when we off center them is if you notice, on this one where the foot is actually coming off the flat, we actually go half way across the square. But when we're off center for the foot of a chair, we actually come halfway across the center on the diagonal. So it's not half the diagonal of that? No, it's only the same measurement that would fall between there and there, quarter width of the timber. And we transfer that measurement to there and that gives us the true off center position on the foot for the other one. But we'll work this one in and then you'll see how it works as we go. Now the first priority is we go to our true centers, which we are in now. We'll cut in our shoulder in a traditional manor, we'll take it down to round before we do any other work. So you're going to do this as we've demonstrated with the skew chisel? Yes we are. It'll be a refresher on the points we've already covered. As you can see we're prepared on the true centers. We'll come to the off center position when we are ready for that. But our first priority is to cut into the square shoulder here. Take it down to round and then we'll prepare for the off center position before we go any further. But do you remember, just as a way of a refresher, I've started on the square blank with the tool leaned in at eleven o'clock, the left hand grinding angle is brought around to the direction of travel there, the handle was taken low we started coordinating ahead of the line and gently meet the shoulder. Taking the lathe speed back down to 2,000 RPM again. Starting with the handle low just go gently back to meet the line there. And that's how a shoulder is completed. Now we took it down to round with a roughing gouge and do you remember why it was square across? It was to give me access to the corner. But I started at the tailstock end, search for the bevel, lift the tool up, found the cut and move toward the tailstock end there. Moving back to meet the headstock. Remember why the tool was square across again? It gave us access into that corner. But we just need to go a little bit further down to the round, there we are. And now it's square across. Roll it over into the corner and just complete the cut like that. And there's our work roughed out and again it's only roughed out, we're going to improve that surface. But we're going to skew chisel it now and it seems a little unusual stage to skew chisel it now, but it'll become obvious at the completion of the job. And we're actually just going to go along and plane with the skew. We set the skew at an angle, little imaginary wedge underneath the back. And that stops the top edge catching. We can only cut on the lower section of the blade And do you remember, we didn't start at the end because there was no support for the bevel. We start a little bit inboard, we brought the tool down until the cutting action takes place and then we move along and we plane in that direction. Then we went back and we completed the tailstock section there with timber underneath the tool. Starting from the tailstock, start high, lift the tool until the cut takes place and then just come along and clean up the surface there. Into the shoulder, this cut is along the shoulder. And then I just went back and cleaned up the foot. And now that's our work prepared, ready to do part of the foot, but we're only going to do a certain section of the foot. We're not going to complete it. The reason will become obvious as we move along as the job progresses. I'll just prepare the bead, ready for rolling. I could've used a large skew, but my favorite is this one. And again, I'm going to roll a half bead here. Remember the skew must finish on its edge. If it doesn't finish on its edge, the tool will snatch vertically there. We roll the bead. We'll just get rid of that section there because that's waste now. And we'll just roll our bead in, this is going to be part of the foot. Roll around, tip into the corner there. Our foot is partially completed at this stage. We could actually sand that at the moment, but if you are going to sand, remove the tool rest out of the way. And again the reason for sanding will become obvious at this point, because we haven't finished the leg, but you'll see the reason why. Sand from underneath, that way you can't catch your hand on any sharp edges. There round your bead. And now we're ready to go to our off center position. But just a point before we go to the off center position, we're turning at approximately 2,000 RPM. Drop the speed of your lathe, because once we go to the off center position the work is going to be out of balance and you could end up with a visit to the dentist. So just drop your speed a little. Slower is safer, except when crossing the road. Now you'll see by us dropping the speed as we start the lathe, but you'll also observe it's running out of true on both ends, but we're true at this one point, so it allows us to blend the cuts together when we've done the shaping of the leg. You'll also notice now how we've got a ghosting effect up here, but a solid image below. Now all we do is turn down to the solid image and we have the leg.Or the basis of the leg. And then you'll see the reason why we haven't finished the foot at this stage, but it is important at this point to make sure the work can rotate freely, because we've off centered it and moved the tool rest farther back to allow the work to rotate clear of the rest. Otherwise you'll damage your corners and the foot of the leg. Now all we do is shape with your roughing gouge. And all we do is we go down until we reach the solid image below. And as you can see the ghosting effect and we'll go a little faster speed. And all we do is work down until the ghost is gone. See we're almost running at absolute truth at that point. That was the reason we off centered so carefully, because it's very difficult to blend two points together when you off center like that And that's why the marks were so critical. You must also not go beyond the ghost, otherwise you'll lose the shape of your leg. You'll see when I stop the lathe in a minute. Just introducing a bit more curve down this side. You see if we go too low, we'll actually cut through the back of the leg here and lose its shape. But you can see, we're still quite away to go look, so we've got a chance to do that. Just before I do that, I'm going to go down with the old spindle gouge which will give me a tighter curve in here, relieve the foot a little bit more. Make it much more interesting. We can take our speed up a touch now because we're down to round. Introducing a little bit more curve. Always searching for the bevel to ride the work as we go along. And now you can see how we're coming close to meeting at the back. But we must not go beyond that point. Do you see how cleanly the gouge has cut even on the soft wood fibers there? But we're developing a nice curve in there. Could do a little bit more. That's it. And now we can blend the two cuts together by coming down here. We've still got a little bit of ghosting left. And what we can see is how the leg is developing. But you see, we mustn't cut through this back section here. Do you see the reason for skewing it before? And finishing it? Because once we go back to true centers, we can't skew chisel this. What we're going to do is just take a take a skew chisel cut down here to clean it up. Nice gentle cut. We're going to blend it in here this top section gently because we want the tool to just meet nice and gentle there. That's it. And now we can just go down here and very carefully. You hear that vibration? That tells me there's still slight flat on the back of this leg. There it is. Just a slight flat. I could hear the tool riding over it. It just needs one more shaving down that section and we're down to the round all the way. Oh that's it. That's got it. Now we stop our lathe and we'll just sand this quickly to blend any of the cuts together. And it will just soften any marks where we might have had it not quite accurate in the foot. And now you can see how this is coming nicely look, but without breaking the straight line there, otherwise you can spoil it. And we can soften that corner in just gently with a little bit of sand paper. That's fine. Now what we're ready for now is finishing the foot and we need to go back to true centers. So you can see the reason why I skew chiseled it before. We actually did the shaping. Because now I couldn't use skew chisel on there safely without wrecking the leg. And now I'm going to finish the foot and you'll see the reason for leaving the foot until the very last or the base of the foot. Just slide our rest back into position. Now my selection to roll a half bead here is an unusual tool. We're actually going to select a parting tool as opposed to a skew. And the reason is quite simple. I'm working right against a bead here, so I couldn't get that far enough with the skew without destroying the bead. It's difficult to get a gouge in there, so the beading and parting tool is a thin tool. It'll just roll the half bead over right from the bead itself. So it gives me access right into that little corner there and rolls over on its side just to complete the cut. And that is the basis of the leg and what it's going to be for a circular table. One of the reasons I'm pleased that we decided to do a set of notes with this video Charles is we can put this down on drawings so people can read it and understand the setting out position clearly. And now we just sand the foot position in there. And you can see the reason we left that until the very last. If I'd done that before I shaped the leg I would have actually lost the basis of the center mark there and there's a danger of it coming out of the lathe. And that's the principle of the leg for a circular table or circular stool where the foot actually comes off the flat, rather than coming off the corner. Thank you very much Allan. Allan, we discussed some lengthy grinding angles on the skew chisel. Grinding is not sharpening is it? You still need to sharpen the edges of the tool? Ya. The tools must be very sharp and obviously to achieve the results we got today, so I'll show you a nice simple way to put tools into excellent order. When I was an apprentice we used to learn to free hand grind on the stone just by dropping the tool on but that's a very difficult way to master. Put a pair of safety glasses on and I'll show you a nice and easy way Charles. Start your grinder and let it run up to full speed and if you've set your rest at the angle that suites your particular tool, instead of trying to feel for the grinding angle, all we do is slide up the rest until we reach the cutting edge and move across the stone. And what you'll see is that it's achieved a perfect grinding angle look. Do the same on the other side and we've achieved a very good edge in a simple way with no skill required at all. That's the skew chisel out of the way, but a gouge is a little bit more difficult because it's got a curved blade. And again, if we take the trouble to set the rest to suit the particular tool, it's not too much of a problem. We feel for the tool on the rest, slide up until we touch the stone and then rotate the tool around, keeping the tool supported by the rest. And by doing that, we'll end up again with a perfect grinding angle like that. So can you use these tools straight from the grindstone onto your work? Yes we could, but the only time I actually use the tool straight from the grinder is if I'm working cross grain wood such as Oak, Ash and other associated timbers. But today we worked with softwood. And Softwood demands a razor sharp edge. So I always go back to the honing stone from the grinder to really get a really excellent cutting edge. But again we discussed a point that we must maintain the same angle and must not introduce a secondary angle. So what I do is I feel for the bevel on the honing or oil stone and then I slide forward there and then the other side like that. Keeping and maintaining the same angle as the grind. And then just wipe off your oil there. And what you'll see, we've got a razor sharp edge now, but before I go any further I would just strop that with the leather like that. And as I work during the day, I would just keep doing that and it'll maintain that razor sharp edge for the full working day. With the gouge, I would still slipstone it if I'm working with softwood like this. And I'll just work with the slipstone inside the flute there. And then the outside edge that way round maintaining the same angle, so that we don't lose the grinding angle. And then just wipe off the surplus oil there and again just a rub with the leather and we'll end up with an edge just like a razor and both tools are ready to go again for working softwood. Thank you very much Allan. And that accomplishes the the technique for the jobs we've done today. Once again, another excellent lesson Allan. Thank you very much. Well thank you Charles. You expelled many of the myths that surround the skew chisel, and shown what a valuable and very versatile tool that it really is. I certainly hope so. I'm sure many of the turners who watch this video will want to try out some of those techniques that you've demonstrated for us, thank you. This has been the second in our series of masterclasses with Allan Batty. You might like to look out for the next one, which will be on boxes and containers. Thank you very much for watching, goodbye for now.
