Turn Your First Bowl - A video class on bowl turning.

welcome back to worth the effort woodworking today we're going to discuss turning your very first bowl now I have a lot of videos out there on advanced techniques and designs and stuff like that we're not going to cover that stuff we're stepping way back for maybe you people that are just getting into the Hobby or curious about the Hobby you wonder what kind of tools you're gonna need and what kind of techniques you're gonna have to learn in order to make shavings and turn that very first bowl successfully and safely and that's the key thing right there you want to do it safely but for those of you out there looking looking for more advanced stuff I'll put links down to those videos down below so come along let's turn your first bolt [Music] let's start out talking about leis now most woodturners I know they're very first lay they buy is generally a mini in fact it's pretty much a jet mini they've been making these things for several decades now and in the mini class am I in I first really function performance that kind of stuff jet pretty much dominates it when you step up to the mid D class in AI di which is a little bit taller here a little bit longer quite a bit heavier and they generally have a more features such as reversing speeds and almost all of them are variable speed well then there's a lot more competition out there but for your very first lathe I do kind of recommend a mini even though I know you will outgrow it fairly quickly the reason why I say that is the reason most of us still keep them even after we step out to the lathe step up to a bigger lathe is they weren't that big an investment they hold their value very very well I mean they used lathe market is long if you spend less than three-quarters of the original asking price generally you're gonna have to put money into it for like belts or bearings or something's going something's off unless you're just getting a great steal so buying a new one isn't that big a hardship compared to buying use they're gonna be in the same range plus several times a year most of the manufacturers have some kind of big blue ourselves where they really discount the minis in order to get you into the hobby because they know that you will be buying more stuff later on the reason why is they get the mini first is it opens up educational opportunities for you you see even after most of us step up to these big ladies we hold on to these we keep them in the shop because they're light enough that we can take them to other Turner's houses and stuff like that and a lot of times our logo turning clubs they might invite people to come in to teach but nobody's gonna have a dozen full-size leis unless you're professional school whereas you know if a bunch of people have these mini legs you can come in set up in somebody's garage spread some extension cables out and actually have a real class with a real professional or if you have my a kids event Cub Scouts Girl Scouts you know just about anything you can take this out and let kids turn running them just on it's the generator I use these at my art markets turning little tops or kids head cuz it runs off of a generator it's light enough that it is I think somewhat portable and that's its advantage so getting a mini lathe first just kind of makes sense now after you get the full-sized lathe that doesn't mean this gets set to the side a lot of people they'll put their buffing wheels on their mini lathe so after they turn something they just have to turn around and they have their different waxes of polishes to polish it everything up so it will serve a function in your shop even after you have a large leg so it just makes sense now we need to buy a new lathe this is generally the setup you're gonna get with pretty much all the manufacturers you'll get your lathe and then they'll give you some accessories the first one being a drive spur that just fits into the Morse taper in the headstock by friction and that's where all your driving force comes from it rotates with the lathe on the back side they will give you what they call a live Center and this outside will spin and that gives it that freewheeling action and the old days they just took a nail and they would put grease on it and that would allow for the slippage but it pushes the wood against the drive center and it keeps it locked together but so you want this to be able to spin freely and that goes into your tail stock and the tail stock is made up of a quill that will go in and out so they can really squeeze that live Center with the wood so it drives in to the drive Center and that will move back and forth on the bed in between those you're going to have a banjo and your tool rest and the tool rest are fairly small they're going to be made out of iron and you're gonna want to modify it a little bit I'll talk about that in a second additionally they are going to give you a knockout bar and that's because with this Morse taper these do not want to come out once you've used it for a little while so you'll be sliding them not get barred through a hole to knock that out so you can put other things on it and most of the time they will also give you a mounting plate a screw plate basically attach it with the larger pieces of wood with screws and this will screw on to your headstock there you go that's generally all they're going to give you to get going in turning I'm going to say that you really do need one major accessory along with the lathe to accomplish all the kinds of turning you're capable from spindle to ball - anchoring and that is a Chuck now my opinion about chucks is you want to buy a really good one there have been a few manufacturers out there that been making woodworking chucks for decades but in the last five maybe ten years there's been a lot of other manufacturers that coming out to compete in this market I'm actually going to tell you stick with either one way or Vic mark because they've been around so long and frankly baby boomers are dying off you can generally pick these up used for about the price of a lot of the knockoffs new and the reason why is these last I know my dad has bought a few of those knockoffs and he hasn't liked him so he passed them down to me and I just don't use them because these they just don't hold their settings as well they just don't feel as good I don't trust them as much where Vic marks in one ways have been around for so long that I trust them I know that they will last probably my lifetime they don't really ever really need to be rebuilt you can buy a bunch of different accessories out there there are some aftermarket stuff like jaws that because these are kind of the standard they build them to fit these so just spend your money this is a lifetime investment I've gone through several lays but I'm still using the same chuck so spend wisely and when you get the Chuck because you're on a mini lathe I would suggest getting what they call number three jaws and they're kind of standard jaws they fit like that you can hold spindles like that and it's big enough to work with most of the size bowls that you'll be using with a mini lathe now most spinning lathes are going to be a three quarter horsepower motor someone go up to a horsepower that's more than enough for what we're going to be doing because we have the advantage of gears and most of them I know of have three gears where a lot of the larger sized lathes only have one or two gears and they depend upon other things to change it and to change your gear ratio it's just like a bicycle you have a gear down below this one I have a set on the big one down up here and the small one down there so the motor spins once and this the motor has a spends two or three times for this to rotate once whereas if I move it over here the motor is on a big gear this is on a small gear so the motor turns once and this turns multiple times and you can speed see the speeds you're capable of and to change the gear you have a little lever and you actually lift up the entire motor on this that loosened that up and if if you're changing to a smaller gear you always want to go down from big to small whether you're on top of the bottom rotate it around then raise the motor up sometimes I find it easiest just to rotate it by hand a little bit to set these belts into these gears and these gears have little channels I'll sit in to get a lot of friction so they don't slip then push down on the lever a little bit to stretch that belt just a tad not much tighten it up close at all an upgrade that will make your life a lot more useful and enjoyable to use is a variable speed motor even though they have gears in different ranges you can actually change the speed with just a dial most lays do not come with this in the mini class all you're going to have is three or five gears that you can change a belt on but being able to change it on the fly is a true luxury and you only pay you know fifty maybe a hundred bucks for that flexibility well worth it and you know your lathe will hold its value on the used market with that than without now too inexpensive upgrades would be I personally do not like this cup style live center because it's actually safer because it has more surface area you'll actually push itself out so you have this little drive center right there that finds a hold and keeps it locked in so the wood won't move left right up and down and then you have this circle ring that actually puts a lot of pressure on it but because it's wider you can't get your tools in there when you're making finishing cuts I actually prefer a column style live Center like this one right here and you can see the difference at the very end it just doesn't have too much surface area and I can get my tool in on these angles to cut that wood it's just a personal preference but I like this style and this isn't that big of an investment also the tool rests I'm gonna use a standard one just to show you the possibilities of a stock setup yes I've never used this tool rest when I bought my first lathe my dad gave me a wonderful present he bought me a robust tool rest and yes I'm named name brand calling this one out because I think it's probably the best in the industry it's got a very hard steel rod right there and the shape of it allows you to get your fingers up underneath it safely and glide smoothly the problem with these is they're made of iron and if you ever get a catch or maybe there's a little bit more stress or maybe because your tools are only touching it at one spot you can dent it and on my large lathe I have one of these iron tool rests and I'm constantly having to take a mill file to it in fact if you look very closely when it comes from the manufacturer it has its mill mark still in it this is not smooth and you need that smoothness listen can you hear it going over those little great so the very first thing you need to do is tune up your tool rest and that's not very hard to do just grab your mill file and come along and smooth it out from top to bottom and I will kind of roll it over a little bit and you want to get rid of all those tool marks and undulations and I personally don't like sharp edges so that's why I'd say roll it over a little bit and you can see the difference see those file arcs where I've taking the paint off there then you have the tool marks just follow those away say get nice round to rest so will drive smoothly there you go your tool will now be able to slide instead of the Lola now besides the late if you're gonna stick with turning you're gonna get end up getting two more power tools it's kind of like in furniture making you know you have your table saw but along with that table saw most people end up getting a jointer and a thickness er those three tools kind of go together when the turning world a lathe kind of goes with a chainsaw and a bandsaw they kind of all work together now if you're just starting out and maybe you know somebody that has a chainsaw or accessed or something or you can scavenge around you don't have to get those right off the bat but you're going to want to do it now if all you want to do is turn I would suggest getting the chainsaw first because it will allow you the most access to free material and as you're learning you're gonna you want to waste a lot of it you want to make a lot of changes to get a good feel for it and everything nice Turner's do with the bandsaw you can accomplish with a chainsaw but if you're just kind of in the DIY you're doing a little bit of everything I would definitely get the bandsaw first because it's a lot more flexible in furniture making crafts and other kinds of stuff so it's kind of which way do you want to go now I do have a video on chainsaw safety and use for the Turner now put a link down to that below real quickly we'll talk about the bandsaw over here now if you are going to be borrowing it some tools are actually going to a friend's house and using dares which is completely viable when you're first starting out because you know most woodworkers want to encourage new we workers and they don't mind it and really for wood turning you're not spending a lot of time using these you're basically cutting up blanks you'll cut up six or seven and then you go back to your lathe and you'll spend the whole weekend turning on those it's not that big a deal but I would suggest you find out what size blades your friend uses and go by themselves one I know Mike town has a professional tool place where a lot of the shops go to in a blade like this for this plate this bandsaw is only about thirteen or fourteen dollars and at least if you're going to be using their equipment go get a blade and ask them hey is your blade really good because some people will spend 70 80 $100 on them and as a new woodworker you don't want to damage that one so if that's the case throw your cheap one on and tell them hey it's yours as a back up go from there but a bandsaw gives you a lot of flexibility for using scrap material but this was a piece of firewood that cut up it was all cracked up it wasn't sealed properly it was going to be waste for anything other than a turning project you see how far in some of these cracks went well on a bandsaw I can position it and cut it right down that blank and then see I've got some cracks on the end but those cracks didn't go too far deep so this center section right here is probably really really solid that I can use to make my first bowl with plus you know at firewood a lot of times it's getting all these pretty small t action so you can use free wood that you just find around I do know when I was first starting out I could get chunks like this right here from furniture makers because they were the end cuts they were jelly scrapped for them they were just throwing them in the dumpster but that right there is big enough to make a nice sized bowl other people's trash trashes your turn treasure as a woodturner now my menu it's model designation is 10 by 15 which means there is basically five inches from the center of this tip down to my legs of bed so that I can turn 10 inches all the way around the model up proceeded was 10 by 14 the difference was the 10 inches designated this way the 14 or 15 designated this distance and that naming nomenclature is pretty common out there but you have to also take into consideration your banjo if you're wanting to get your tool real close to it because you have a small tool rest well you don't have that five inches you only have this far so an easy way to determine how much of a bowl blank that you can put on something is to use a pair of dividers from your lowest spot up to the center and then make it a little bit shorter so on a blank like this I can now position my dividers in the center and see how much I have to take off of this blank in order for it to just fit on my lathe and rotate so I'm not going for it in this example I'm not going to get a perfect size I'm just gonna cut off the stuff that I know will not rotate around now if I didn't have a bandsaw and all I had was access to a chainsaw well I could put this down on a block of wood maybe secure somehow and as long as I cut so that all these little scratches went away this blank would go onto my lathe it would just mean that I would have somewhat of an octagon and I would probably lose a little bit distance to those corners but as long as I have a bandsaw I can cut just inside that curve and it will work all work out ok the thing is with a bandsaw you have to watch out because you are cutting a curve and a bandsaw is great for cutting curves as long as you understand that the wood needs to feed into the teeth a lot of Turner's tend to push sideways on the blade and it flexes and puts a lot of tension on it that's what you actually want to watch out for you also do not want to push and if you're pushing into the blade rotating it see how my hand right now is pushing into that that's just plain stupid and dangerous the idea would be to come over to the side and if you're rotating it rotate it around here so Mike if anything happens my hand goes this way not into the blade I'm going to cut this out as a circle real quickly and show you proper hand placement if you want to cut a curve in that entire cut all I was doing was concentrating on getting it entering the interface of the blade straight I wasn't trying to curve it back here to do it just focusing on that and making sure the direction rotated around and this hand was going this way not that way now if you're watching my other videos you will see a lot of times I will start out bow turning between centers meaning I've got my drive spur on this side I've got a live set on that side and I will turn it this way that's because I'm trying to balance grain and stuff like that before your very first one I would really suggest using the face plate because right now we just want to get a successful bowl safely done and chances are you might make a mistake in this first one the set the face plate is the safest way to do it as long as you use the right screws do not use drywall screws or anything like that because these kinds of screws that you're using here are going to be taking a lot of torque a lot of banging and it's this break this angle this torsion where they break on you in fact if it all Plus will maybe go to a store like fasten all that specialized in just screws not one of the big-box stores and go to the counter and tell them what you're doing and ask for some good solid stainless steel screws now I will admit I'm just using big box stores number 12s I think just big monster ones for the simple reason I don't use face plates that often that's what I have here but this is one of those do as I say not as I do this is not a drywall screw this is a real crew and it's got the tapered in so they will cinch down in the holes and Center it and give me a good tight bite and also remember that screws fatigue over time so don't use the same ones for years on end you're gonna want to get new screws every now that don't want to loose screw now when you mount a face plate or chuck this distance right here is critical it has to be seated really really tightly really whack it in there and make sure you can't just undo it by hand really rotate that in to torque it down the reason being is even if there's a hairline gap right there your bowl blank will rattle and things can get dangerous and if you have a reversing lathe that will even turn off the lathe a lot of these things have little screws right here that will help anchor it to prevent that one in case you do screw up and don't seat it properly but really get it seated tight now what I've just done right here is set up somewhat like what they call face turning in that the tree the other half of this log the tree grow up and down this way so I'm actually rotating the tree end over in I'm not turning it on an axis like that that would be ingrained ball making because you're turning the bowl into the length of the tree not the side of the tree and to start out go with the side of the tree it's just a lot easier but one of the things about face turning is thinking about grain direction it's a little bit different I mean if you have a board and you know we know that the grain is running up and down the tree like here and it's running this way sideways fairly easy concept to grab so if you ever plain wood you generally want to plane what they call uphill so that you're laying fibers down not lifting them up what that means is if I have grain running like this right here if I were to plane in this direction well basically I would be can these fibers up and there's a chance it will develop a crack will run down into the wood and you get what you call tear out it's really really ugly whereas if I were to plain the wood with a hand plane this way I'm pushing all those fibers down so even if there is a crack it goes up into the wood that I'm already cutting off so it doesn't really matter and it just doesn't crack when you do that one well that's easy to think about when you're talking about 2d surface like the tabletop but when we are rotating something on its face well now it's a lot more complicated sort of if only you could have a top-down view of your bowl blank because right now our grain is running like this you can actually see those fibers okay so something you're gonna have to think about constantly as a woodworker is how to lay fibers down for example if I were to come in this direction like that or this direction like this all those fibers are being pushed down but if I were to come out this direction like that can you see these fibers they want to grab break off because there's nothing or nothing behind them to support them they want to crack off so when you're turning wood you want to think about the fiber as more as you're going into the center or coming out to the outside in a bowl you're going down to the center from the outside towards the center that lays fibers down but if you're doing the outside of the bowl coming this way that's the way you lay fibers down because if I were to come this way on the outside of the bowl you can see I'm going against the grain and it's something you just kind of have to think about for a long time but when you're turning your first bowl I suggest trying in both directions because just by feel you will say oh it's easier one way and it's crunch here another way it's generally crunchy when coming out because things are splitting off so you're not constantly in the wood something to think about so we've talked about the two lathe we've talked about some accessory tools such as your Chuck different tool rests the chainsaw and the bandsaw and I showed you how to cut a piece of wood and we actually mounted that wood on the lathe so the last tool we really need to talk about is the bowl gouge and for this entire project as a new woodworker I really do suggest just using one I have a half inch fingernail ground bowl gouge and what they mean by the fingernail grind is how the edge is cut and at the end of this video I will show you how I sharpen it and shaped this chitinous gouge but for now let's just get to the fun part of using it now before we go any further I need to point out that this tool I have in my hand is not a bowl gouge and should never be used on a bowl this is what they call a spindle roughing gouge and yes they both have a u-shape and yes you can grind the wood the tip any way you want the thing is these are made out of flat stock can you see on the ferrule right there it's basically a flat piece of wood metal that is rolled up on the edges and bent to that shape so as it goes into the faroe it is still flat now in the vintage days that's how they made these tools that's also when they were working with spring pole lays and that kind of stuff and they really they did it because this was the simplest way for them to make tools a wheel Bowl gouge is made out of a really thick piece of steel and the flute is ground out it's not caused by thin sheets rolled up that adds a lot of strength to the tool the problem is if you've ever taken a tin can aluminum cannon you kind of bend it back and forth to break it in half well this flat piece of metal is going to get torqued over and over and over it repeatedly because when you got a tree standing on end and you're rotating it around it's like this well at some point you're going into and grain some point you're going into long grain and grain long grain so you give this a vibration that will actually fatigue that metal or if you get a catch and you've got your hand way back here lots of leverage on that tip it could actually snap at the ferrule spin around sticking your neck come out your ear and put a huge Tarantino splash of gore on a wall and let me tell you getting blood off walls is really hard to do so you just don't want to use this kind of tool on a bolt this is strictly for spindle turning and nothing else I also want y'all see something else right now this tool you can see that the flute is right in the middle and both wings are completely flat this is what's called an open position in wood turning to close a position basically you turn those wings so that you are now perpendicular to the ground that is 100% closed so a lot of times you will hear people in videos or in books talk about opening or closing the gouge and what they're talking about is the angle of these two items now why is that important well if I have it completely open right now I want you to look at where the tool is touching the tool rest it's right at the bottom of that gullet can y'all see that that is the only point of the tool that is actually supported on the tool rest if I were to press down on this wing over here as if I was touching cutting on this little corner right there it wants to rotate around same thing on the other side it wants to rotate but if I press down right in the middle it's completely stable so the idea is we want to cut on a piece of the blade that is supported underneath now that might mean that if I rotate it over to its side-eye slightly close it I am now being supported right here it doesn't mean I'm supported on this side if I press over on this side it's still gonna want to rotate but if I press right at that spot that supported it is completely stable it doesn't want to rotate army if I press over on this side it's gonna want to rotate over this way but I want you to notice something if I get it completely closed I could stare almost close I could still press on this side it's not supported I can also press on the top and it is not supported and it will want to rotate in that right there whenever the tool is actually rotating on its own because something is torquing it around that's what they call catch and no matter how you are presenting the wood TV the tool to the wood the idea is you're wanting to touch the blade on the bottom half not the top half because that's the angle of the bevel is being supported there the top half will always want to rotate it into the tool and you want to touch it at a spot where it's being supported underneath that's critical in all a wood turning even spindle turning and the final thing before we start talking about actual turning techniques your interaction with the tool of the wood all that kind of physics is I want to talk about the tourist placement everything we are going to be doing today operates off of leverage and you can use leverage to increase both your power and your accuracy increase leverage by power by giving yourself a large handle so if I move the back of this handle if the tip barely moves a little bit well that's how you can lift up a car with a jack because you're moving a lot versus a little bit it's a different ratio but the other advantage of that one is it gives you a lot of control cuz a lot of moving back here by clumsy ox like me translate to my new movements at the actual interaction between the edge and the wood so you can gain a lot of control by the back of the handle problem is where's your Tourette's going to be located if I've got my to rest way out here wasn't my leverage is a lot less and actually these tools are not designed to hang over the Tourette's that much because there's so much force right here you're competing against a three-quarter horsepower motor if you give it the mechanical advantage it has a power to cost you over what you want to do is position your tool rest close enough so that you have both mechanical advantage but not so close that you're having to deal with the angles and the bevels of the tool because I mean you can't get it real close but then there's a ramp on the back of the tool so it's gonna be fighting you you want it securely rested and you'll find a comfort zone to me that's a tad bit close but I know that after a few strokes I'll be at my optimum level by the time I get to this far off of a piece of wood that's about two inches two and a half inches I'm going to be relocating my tool rest to a closer angle so that I maintain control because I'm a wimp that way I don't want to have to muscle it and for the majority of the tools that you're going to be using you're going to want to engage the wood just slightly above the center certain rotation point you'll give you the optimal angle and all its force at that angle is going straight down if you engage it up here some of the fours is coming back towards you and the tool will want to come back a little bit but in some cuts you might notice my tool starts in the middle and it rises up a little bit and then comes back down towards the center that's because I'm pivoting off of the bevel at the same time as I'm pivoting off of the tool that's the concept called riding the bevel and it's an easy way to ease into the wood now I want you to think about a hand plane you have a blade right there if I were to take the blade out of this and just jam it onto the wood the blade itself is gonna want to dive into the wood and it kind of it stops cutting after a while cuz there's so much resistance there but there's nothing pulling it back the whole purpose of a hand plane is this bottom bevel there the blade itself is one you dive into the wood whereas the soul is preventing it from diving into the wood that's why you get that nice long shaving it's a balance between going in and pushing back a gouge is somewhat the same way in that we have a bottom bevel right there where my fingernail is to the edge that is the sole of our plane that's what prevents this edge from diving into the wood because if I were to just take it and jam it in like that because that bevel is not touching it it wants to dive in but if I were to come over on the side touch that bevel down right now it's not cutting because the cutting edge is off the wood but if I sue if I push that bevel down and let it kind of glide over the work and slowly raise my handle up until the cutting edge engages that cutting edge is gonna want to push my gouge into the blank but because that bevels right there the bevel is pushing it back so I find a balance point where I'm just taking nice thin wispy shavings so a lot of times when you see if somebody start a cut they'll kind of back up and you'll see them start right here in the dull ease into it until they see the shavings and at that point in time that will either lock the handle to their hip or brace it around another key thing is your front hand you do not control your tool with the front of your handle kind of like when you're writing with a pencil you write down by the lead but at this point in time because of leverage because your pencil is we're pivoting off of your web of between your thumb and your forefinger the leverage right there you are magnifying minut movements we want to reduce movements so this right here instead of having the pivot point being the web of the hand we want the pivot point to be up here hence your front hand is really only a back brace to prevent the tool from skating back a little bit and it gives you a pivot point and a lot of times like people like me we will put hands on top of it it's more like a dampening wait where something on this side of the gouge is becoming our pivot point but our backhand is what's controlling the rotation the insertion the angles all that kind of stuff the front hand is just kind of a dampening way in a pivot point which is why you see some people will put their thumb here and their fingers underneath the fingers are pressing down acting as a dampening and your thumbs right here the advantage of that one is the shavings aren't coming back and hitting their hand you'll see me a lot of times wear a glove because I prefer the overhand grip and those shavings come back and hit my hand but the idea is many times you start on the bevel you ease the edge into the tool you have some kind of back pressure to prevent it from skating backwards and then you use your back hand to control the movement and speaking of movement you want to use mainly the big muscles of your body you don't want to use your fingers to control stuff these are fine motor skills but they're also kind of jittery your whole body has some mass to it some more than others and that mass gives you gradual control so if you're starting over here notice your arm might be locked out but you move your body to control everything if you're locking it into your body you're gonna lock it in and you're gonna move your body it's big muscle groups that make the smoothest cuts which means that on every cut you have to think ahead of where your body is going to start and where it's gonna end for example if I'm making an interior cut on my bowl I know that I'm going to start here and I'm going to end here so I don't want to have anything in my way so I might remove this section right here slide that off and now I can move my entire body I'm leaning forward leaning back I can make the entire movement ahead of time and that will give me a very smooth actuation at the cutting edge in spindle Turner's a lot of time you'll see it they'll kind of I know I'm gonna end up over here so they'll put their weight on this leg and then they'll start the cut and they shift their entire body so that way they know they can make the entire cut if you're a bo Turner you might do the same thing won't come around the outside so you shift all your weight on this leg see let's take this leg and then you can rotate around shifting to your other leg without really moving your upper body it's all done with your legs have I totally confuse you yet well we haven't made the first cut yet so that's a teacher's job to confuse you before you get going like everything once you do that first cut a lot of these things are gonna make sense but because you understand stood it beforehand as your body does stuff and you see the reactions you'll understand why it's happening that way you can build upon it you can understand when things go wrong better gotta understand the physics first before you can analyze what's happening in real life so let's get ready to do some turning I want to check that my my tool rest will come over there I did notice I miss cut this a tad bit cuz it would hit on my banjo right there so I'm gonna moved it over just to the point where as I rotate it it doesn't hit the banjo and I'm gonna also make sure it doesn't hit my tool rest and I have enough clearance for it to work now when I'm in this position I cannot cut the full width of my bow blank because my to rest is just not long enough by the time I got to the end there's a chance it would fall off but I also know that this is not round whatsoever so a lot of times the first step is to get a perfectly round of blank and what that might mean is you will only round half of it the perfect on the tool rest and once you get that rounded to the point your banjo is more likely to slide under this so you can get the rest of the ball blank to the same size so for most of the cuts today what we're going to do is we're going to start in a mainly closed position meaning the tool is not quite at perpendicular but just slide lay off and we which means that what's being supported underneath the tool is right underneath the midpoint of my tool rest right about there so that's going to be the cutting action and we are going to be pushing through the cut and it's called a push cut in some very safe cut and because we are beginning we're not going to really change that angle up as we go through just get a consistent cut now the first thing you want to do is the bevel that you have on your tool that's how you're going to aim where you're going remember you're gliding that bevel the back of the bevel first and the blade kind goes forward and that bevel prevents it from diving in so that direction right there is how you aim so I get my tool in the way I want that I've lined that tool bevel up I see where I want to go and this is the posess is the direction I'm going to be wanting to cut so I get everything lined up and make sure I can make that movement without stumbling or getting off balance or anything like that and then we're going to turn the lathe on at our lowest speed speed it up many times I'll speed it up until it starts to vibrate [Music] [Applause] then back it off a little bit because it's unbalanced right now line everything up get my angles right and then just make a slow progress through taking a little bit so as you can see we've started making our cuts and I wanted to do this one because when you first start out that those first cuts are not always going to be in solid sometimes you're cutting air now the idea was that we were touching that bevel and then the edge at the same time and gliding through that was forming our direction but what you don't want to be doing is pressing really hard against the wood here it's more of a gliding action if you press hard what happens is as this coming through all sudden you hit air and then your pressure is going to go in and it's gonna bang in the wood and you start getting this very violent bang bang bang bang bang it's uncomfortable it's not very confidence inspiring but if you're just gliding it through using your fingers as kind of a fulcrum and a brace back and gliding forward well then it's all going to be smooth because you're not going to be pushing it into the blank space on the air so let's turn it on and continue our cut so I'm going to get my angle this way one and then just slowly work my way forward trying not to push the game to the center of the blank so now that we've made that first cut we've removed some of the material I can now slide my banjo underneath the entire thing so that my tool rest can go from one side to the other easily and now I can finish up rounding this entire thing and I can co from both directions so if you wanted to look at another way I come over here and also the more mature you you remove the less unbalanced it is the more you can speed it up and the more you speed it up the smoother your and more confidence and inspire your cuts will be so turn it on get it to speed you're comfortable with come around position your angle your fruit the way you want slightly open get everything set and then just make sure you're back so you can move forward and one in one smooth motion position and then just move through so this will be the last angle we take to see how those initial cuts to round out the whole thing are done so I have my tool completely closed I'm gonna open it up a little bit I'm gonna aim with the bevel of where I want to go I'll position my hand so that I can move it embrace it against my buddy and use my legs to move all the way forward turn on the lathe raise it up to speed I feel comfortable with [Applause] position everything and then just move through you may be very deliberate and steady motion you might hit the wall this is underpowered [Music] [Applause] so we've made a complete sphere all except for one little spot right there which that'll come off when we complete the bowl shape and that's our next step since this is our first bowl what I want to do next is to cut off this corner at about 45 degree angle we're not going to try to create a curve right now I just want to remove this corner so what did i do I reposition my tool rest so it's going in the angle I want and you'll make things a lot easier because I can just put the gallows on the tool rest use my finger right here this is the fulcrum and a little bit deadweight and I just follow that I can make it a nice straight line following this lining up my bevel in the direction I'm going and I want to do two things I want you to go in different directions take a little bit this way then reverse it take a little bit this way take a little bit this way and a little bit that way until you come in and you take maybe a quarter of the total diameter off at the angle and I want you to pay attention to what you're feeling [Applause] [Music] when you're doing this way versus this way [Music] what's that which cuts easier which has a different smoother feel which one do the shavings come off nice and long and strippy and which ones are kind of crunchy kind of short analyze the difference but you're not going to have to change the angle just set it just like we did before slightly open from closed position aiming with the bevel and you might want to reposition your tool rest after you cut off a little bit so were you able to tell the difference between the cuts to give you an example right here I made one cut coming this way and then I made another cut coming back down this way but I only went half way can you see the amount of tear out the colored variations on this one it gets rough when I get over to the end grain and there's little bitty holes everywhere we're in the same spot where I'm going with this direction it's it's really smooth I mean this is glass smooth to the touch this feels like sandpaper come around here it's it's very smooth right there but it's also smooth right here but I go this far forward and now I'm back to this rough sandpaper and if you look at it you can see it a lot more the pores and locked out now my tools are fairly sharp if yours was just kind of normal you might see larger tear out right there but it's still glass smooth all the way around when I was going this way and and that's a difference between cutting with the fibers and against the fibers because if the fibers are coming this way if I came up in this direction all my fingers getting pressed against each other but if I came back at this position they're kind of being spread apart and they kind of snap off because there's nothing back behind them to brace them up but what do you think what's gonna happen in each direction when we start talking about the inside of the bowl so go ahead and finish off those corners and let's come back next up I want you to kind of take these two corners off right here at half the distance I don't know what angle that is but just remove them doing the same exact thing and now both of these go uphill go with the grain so now what you have is basically a 16-bit bowl straight lines can't connect in different angles so in one fell swoop I want to come from this point right here and make a smooth transition all the way around and how I'm going to do that is with big muscle groups and a smooth transition so I'm good position my to rest so that I can reach from one side and work all the way to the other and keep it fairly tight I'm now going to position my body so that I can go from one area to the other now do all this before I turn the lathe on so now I can start not quite toward the center and locking everything together make that smooth motion without really changing my upper body much and then it's just a matter turning it on making the smooth transition cut [Laughter] don't stress out if your shape is it exactly what you want just make a smooth transition this is just your first bowl and we're just learning techniques the next step is we want to mount this to your Chuck so we need to create a small tenon now in an ideal world we would create a tenant that whenever we closed our Chuck down it would be exactly this size because at that point you get the most contact in the entire ring but understand we're beginners so if we were to make a tenon that when we clamp down was this big well we would be getting a lot of contact points at each one of these corners and for a bow this size that's more than enough so what we want to do is create a tenon that big but it doesn't have to be all the way back to this back panel in fact if it was only a third of the way that would be perfectly fine because the strength of a tenon is not how far deep it goes how snugly it fits along this fence right here is exactly is the same as when we secured our faceplate to the lathe itself any gap in between there causes vibration if we don't have any gap there we know we'll get a snug fit so the easiest way I know to get that perfect size is when you have something this big just bring it up there and kind of mark it you'll get a mark right there and you know that's how big you want your tenon to be so we'll just make it a tad bit bigger I'm gonna turn my lathe on there's my circle that's my depth so I'm gonna bring my tool wrist over to that exact point right there I'm gonna position my tool it's completely closed now I'll open that up ever so slightly I will aim with the bevel going that way I'm gonna place it right on my pencil line turn the lathe on and I'm going to press in and create a nice pinin maybe a quarter of an inch now all this material over here I can go ahead and take off so once again get it closed slightly open aim with the bevel and then just push through now the two key things I was looking for in my dovetail was either a dead horizontal edge or slightly dovetail just ever so slightly dovetail and I wanted a completely 90-degree corner right in here the reason why is the strength of this tenon once again is not the length of the tenon but it's that shoulder you want your your Chuck to be able to get right next to that shoulder all the way around when it's fully tightened that's where your strength comes from so now you get to take the bowl blank off and sometimes you've got it on so tight and because of all the vibration of cutting is actually tightening it a little bit you might have to lock your spin oh there's a little lever or button on one side I'll pin it so you can lock it in and then just really torque you around to peel this off take off your face book install your Chuck then you're go on take your bowl blank really press it in hard put a lot of pressure there and then tighten up your Chuck if you end up with any kind of air gap between the shoulder and the jaws well then you need to reduce in your Chuck rotate this a little bit so the teeth aren't biting in the same place and repeat the process you just need to be able to tighten your chuck up as tight as it'll go with no air gap whatsoever between the jaws and the shoulder of your tenant now many times even though you've loaded it perfectly and everything's done right when you turn it on you're going to notice it's not quite perfectly round it's at this point time that you have the opportunity to find two you're shaping on the backside now I would do this with a cut that I call a shear scrape now a scraping action is whenever you take a blade this is a scraper and you present it at a less than 90 degree angle so that the wood is kind of scraping off of a burl right there or just a 90-degree edge and the shavings come off and I'll show you what that's like right here those shavings but we're not going to use that tool that was just to show you the example what I can do is take my gouge and using that lower and interior flute angle if I give that to less than 90 degrees and I touch it off of the tip right towards the front right below Center right there because that is what's supported on the tool rest I can get a scraping action now if I raise lower than my handle and raise it up now all of a sudden the wood is passing by the blade at an angle instead of straight at 90 degrees even though the interior angle of the flute is less than 90 degrees you notice that kind of shape as you get off of it our little curlicues once again I have my flute the lower wing of my flute and I present that at a less than ninety degree angle so the wood is kind of scraping off this bottom wing right there that is a scraping cut I come along and I am actually touching the wood right here because I'm slightly open and that's right where it just touching the two rest of that right there where my fingernail is it's a supported part of this cut and that gives me those very nice wispy shavings but they aren't curly cues so if I drop my handle so it comes up and I do that same exact cut now the wood is coming off of that lower level at a slight angle and that's where you get those from excuse and that's what makes a pure breaking cut so in order to perfect whatever shape I want I myself and looking up here to see the shape and positioning the lower wing at less than 90 degrees I'm dropping the handle I'm locking that into my body so I don't have to watch the tool I can walk up here and whenever I touch it the wood starting at the bottom and coming up I'm going with the grain in a sheer scrape I will finalize whatever shape I like notice I'm getting those wispy curly Q's [Music] warning never let that top edge even come close to touching keep that away because that will give you a nasty cat you're working off to the bottom wing next up I'm going to reposition my tool rest across the face and high enough so that my bowl gouge will be touching the center of the bowl whenever it is resting on the tool rest this itself is not at the center line the tip of my gouges so this is once height will depend upon if you're using a 3/8 a half inch what I'm using or a 3/4 or 5/8 inch gouge it will all affect that one and the first thing I like to do is just even up the shoulder of the bowl I don't need to square up the entire face just what's going to be the edge of my bowl so turn on the lathe completely closed open it ever so slightly point with the bevel come over where you want and that's going to be a portion of the edge of my boat from there we want to start removing the bulk of the material in here and it sounds like we're now doing an entirely different operation but the cut is still going to be the same the wood doesn't know that it's a different operation so once again we will have the flute completely closed open it ever so slightly we're going to be cutting off the bottle wing and aiming with our bevel and I'm gonna create slight V cuts until I start getting close to the edge and you know make sense when you see come in enter the word maulvi gun don't take off coupons I'm taking off too much man but I come in where I get close to the diameter of the edge of the bowl that I want then come back little Vika [Music] you aren't taking a huge bite here to weight it down I repeat when you get towards the center of the cone you can actually just put the tip right in the center you'll take low by just work your way down work your way down now once I get to this point I'm not but a third of the way in the bowl so I can reverse it and now go the other way now after coming back this way I'm only about halfway down on my example halfway to the base of where I want to be but before I go all the way down I want to start thinking about the thickness of the bowl up here because as you the deeper down you go you can't really come back and touch this again because if you make it thin which we're gonna have to do because this is a grain bowl we're just gonna go straight to the finished stage no inter merely intermediary six months of drawing we want to make it fairly thin maybe a quarter of an inch and that that thinness it will start to vibrate a little bit so we can't really come back and touch it other than sanding later on so right now you know I'm about 3/4 of a fingernail right there that's probably a half inch and I know I want to be right there so that's it small enough to bite that I'm just gonna take the whole amount what you don't want to do is take nibble it a little bit you want to take a good enough bite so it's gonna feel balanced so turn the lathe on closed slightly open aiming with the bevel come over position it so you can make the entire movement lock to your body you don't have to fiddle around a little bit slowly into the wood with a good bit of back pressure right when you're first starting out so it doesn't skate on here watch the cut in this step this pressure know fit because the bevel is what's preventing it from moving around then just press down a little bit on the outside of the bold and the inside with your eyes and then you can check it with your fingers to make sure that the thickness thick wall thickness is fairly even and mine's okay you can you you actually can't tell if how close it is here but if it was spreading out your fingers can tell that they're moving apart and that's what you're doing when you're moving back and forth so after that's done it's just a matter a repeating of coming in close to the edge maybe coming back and then making a cleaning cut you will have to reposition your tool rest every now and then because eventually you're just way too far off of it now there are some advanced techniques to really get a smooth finish on the Bub's and a lot of people will use what they call bottom feeder bowl gouge whose specific purpose is getting that smooth before your first bowl I am going to introduce a second tool and that's a bowl scraper and what it is it's kind of a prolonged round nose you flatten the edges right there and generally you put this at about 70 degrees and a lot of times I will turn away the heel right there so it's a lot narrower on the inside and that'll put a slight burr on it and you're gonna cut with that burr and the key thing is you want to engage the burr cuz it's rolled back a little bit by leaning forward to the gouge a little bit and that burr will then cut in and this the in the roundness of the burb becomes the bottom of your plane to push it back so I positioned this tool so I can get right at the mid-range and the tool is angled down a little bit and fYI these little mirrors these little flashlights that I think I paid $5 at Home Depot little gue gooseneck things has a magnet on bottom it's really nice getting into seeing your work so from there it's just finishing up the interior of your boat there's a little scraping action [Music] [Applause] [Music] after that last pass with a scraper all of us should do is sand the outside put a finish on it and then take the tin and off and the hard part is taking the tin and off I don't think I need to show you how to sand it's just going through the grits making sure you get the making sure you get all the swirls from the previous gear out and for your first Bowl hey maybe even not do that one maybe just hit it with 220 and don't worry about it now to remove the the tin in we're going to use an old tennis ball trick so basically take your bowl out of the Chuck then go ahead and reduce this to smallest diameter and then what you're going to do is you're gonna find the center of the box of the bowl many times for me this is a lot easier because I had the center punch from whenever I was turning it between centers but there will be concentric rings from when you cleaned it up and then just place your tennis ball there right in the bowl and then move your tail stock up and put it right in the center of the bowl clamp it down and then extend the quill to squeeze that tennis ball flat tennis ball will kind of even its pressure out and if it's kind of wobbly a little bit you can kind of tap it to get a Center and then keep tightening me then it's gonna be a matter of making that same exact push cut you know having it close slightly opening it engaging it just below the tip and making very light cuts to bottom out that tenon and actually make it a little bit concave so that the bowl will be resting on the edge another Center and then just take it nice and slow you're not in a hurry here this is just remove the tenant this is where I kind of like that con drive because this is just so bulky I can't get my tool in there very well and put your first bowl the last of that you're just going to either chisel off or get a little belt sander and sand that off flat don't worry about getting too complicated on your very first ball oh and the favorite part I forgot to turn the camera on but basically is adding the finish I like to use a little Mahoney's all you don't need to do anything fancy for your very first Bowl mine was sanded up to about I wanna say 120 grit you can still see some lines in there but I understand this was just a learning experiment for most of y'all this is gonna be your very first Bowl and it's something the size that you know an iced oatmeal Bowl or if you have some friends that have new kids this would be a perfect bowl for Cheerios or something like that or just a little salt pinch or condiment bowl for the table or if you're a guy it's a place to throw your keys and your wallet and your change so put a little oil on it let it soak in for about 20 minutes wipe off everything you can do the same repeat the same thing the next day and the day after that and then you'll be all done I like walnut oil because it's a fully natural oil and Mahoney's processes his a little bit so it seems to dry a little bit quicker a little bit harder but it is gonna take you know a good week for it to fully cure and when you put oil in it you might see a little dark spots here and there where you had a little bit of tear out but once again you're learning it's not that big a deal we did this fairly quickly well I hope you enjoyed this video and you understand that it really doesn't take a whole lot of tools to make something like a bowl right here is all that I used on creating this one you know I had my bug-out which was a main tool we use I did revert to a bowl scraper towards the end just because I thought that it would be a little bit easier for a new woodworker doing their first Bowl to get that bottom thickness as as it is to do the top because the tops a little bit easier because you can visually see it the bottom you're kind of feeling your way other than that you know I had a chisel or a drill press some screws love knickknacks stuff all I used was a 120 grit sandpaper no big deal this was just your first bowl and with all of that I hope you want to go out and try to make one I do suggest that on your first bowl you have an experienced turner around so that you can ask questions because there will be things that you might do that you know somebody like me on the other side of a camera can't see this is not a two-way communication pass so having somebody experienced there is a great way to do it I do know a lot of woodturning clubs my hand something like a first Saturday we're a bunch of the wood Turner's will get together everyone will bring their little mini lathe and they'll just play for a day and that's a perfect opportunity to just hey go over and say can one of y'all teach me how to turn a bowl and maybe you can use all their equipment there most of them are more than happy to do that one cuz it gets a new convert into the cult so please go out and make a bowl with somebody well I hope you enjoyed this video and if you did please like favorite subscribe do all those social medias maybe forward this to a friend that's kind of interested in would tourney so they can get a good idea of what it takes and you can also help subsidize me making more of these channels by visiting my website I run a blog right right of the occasional article I have an Instagram channel where I did fairly often tips that kind of like this little sections of these videos I also have a online store where I spill swag such as t-shirts hats some of my own work stuff like that all of it really does help subsidize the time I invest to making these kinds of videos and I want you to remember one last thing in this that it is always worth your effort to learn create and share with others y'all be safe and have fun

Channel: wortheffort

Views: 636,437

Rating: 4.8818922 out of 5

Keywords: wortheffort, woodworking, wood working, turning, wood turning, woodturning, wood, lathe, bowl, spindle, chuck, tool rest, gouge, scraper, beginner, beginning, basic, DIY, craft, skill, tenon, Oneway, Jet, Mini, Midi, Vic-Marc, push cut, pull cut, scrape, green, dry, band saw, bandsaw

Id: D_P8Fm5-aVs

Length: 77min 13sec (4633 seconds)

Published: Sun Feb 10 2019