Wood Turning Tool Marks — How To Avoid Video

today we're going to make some spectacular tool marks [Music] hi i'm kent and welcome to turn a wood bowl today we're going to make some spectacular tool marks now why would we want to make tool marks not to mention spectacular tool marks well tool marks just happen right well not really there are specific reasons why tool marks happen and if we aren't curious enough and investigate what's causing our tool marks we could just keep repeating those tool marks forever and ever and i don't know about you but i don't want tool marks on my bowl and i don't want to spend countless amounts of time sanding out tool marks that's not fun either so i want to make nice clean cuts but in order to do that we have to understand how tool marks are made and then i'm going to show you how to fix the tool mark issues and how to turn correctly so you don't get the tool marks but before we can do that we've got to go make some spectacular tool marks so let's go ahead and get started okay let's take a look at our first tool mark issue all right with the lathe running you can see these really really well i'm going to go ahead and turn it off you can also see them here but it's really easy to see when it's turning we have these grooves or lines it looks like an old record with all of the different grooves in there this is a pretty common tool mark that will occur now what is causing this this has to do with the pace of the bull gouge going quicker than the rotation of the lathe will cut the wood so in other words the bowl gouge is advancing faster than the rotation of the blank will allow it to cut an area so we're our pace is too fast we're moving the bowl gouge too quickly for the rotation of the lathe okay so how do we correct these grooves that were created from the bowl gouge paste being too fast well there are two ways to do that we could just slow down the bull gouge pace so instead of moving as quickly as i was i can go slower you can see here that i'm allowing enough time and enough rotations for there to be a nice smooth cut and you can see the difference here when i'm slowed down the pace of the bowl gouge compared to earlier i've got this nice smooth cut versus this rough grooved cut now the other option is to keep the pace as fast as you did initially but increase the rotation of the lathe so if we take the the lathe speed and bring it up a bit now keep in mind we don't want to introduce new vibrations here if you've got any questions about the speed of your lathe be sure to check out my video about lathe speed i'll put a link up in the top corner for you to take a look at that so now with the lathe speed turned up i can move the bowl gouge quicker and still achieve a nice smooth cut so the first issue that we have with the bull gouge making bad tool marks is the pace of the bowl gouge moving too quickly so two two solutions to that slow down the pace of the cut or speed up the speed of your lathe if you can and if you if you can do it safely all right now i'm going to make a particularly really annoying tool mark this tool mark annoying me for the longest time let's see if you pick up on how this is created it's much more subtle than most of the other tool marks that are created did you see it probably not let's look in here closer now you see that you see these waves these ripples yeah that's a very annoying tool mark and you can see how it's basically changing the texture of the wood so these are the tops of these ripples are high and they're low they're going in and out up and down and it's really gonna over time it's going to get much worse because as i try to move the tool across that the tool is going to ride all those waves up and down and it's going to keep accentuating those waves so what is causing those tool marks i'll tell you what let's take a look at it one more time i'm going to do this one up close there's a little clue there listen to the sound most of these tool marks will create a sound that is going to be distinct and you want to be listening for the different sounds as you're cutting and you can see the tool vibrating now on those waves here's what's really frustrating with this because it appears as if i'm riding the bevel and everything's fine i've got the tool rest nice and close so i got good tool rest support i've got the flute angled towards the cut the push cut we're doing it looks like everything's fine but what is the problem let's take a look at the surface here let's look at these tool marks yep there are those waves they're getting bigger and they're very pronounced if you could feel this you can you can feel right across here and feel all those waves of this really rough to mark texture that's occurring here if i move the light down the side you can really see those tool marks all right so what's causing these tool marks well even though even though it appears or riding the bevel and we are riding the bevel what i'm doing to create these tool marks is i'm applying force in towards the bull blank versus down on the tool rest now if i make the same cut and i focus my force down on the tool rest instead of into the bull blank what's happening this bevel is being what what i did earlier is i pushed this bevel into the bowl and that rubbing is causing the the bulb length to create a pattern and where it's spinning and creating this wave waveform instead i need to be forcing down on the tool rest and let the bolt come around and simply be shaved off with the shear cut or the angled cut of this bowl gouge let me show you what the cut should look like and let's correct that now the other thing that's very subtle with this is you need to pull your handle out just a bit i'm going to exaggerate here but you can see where the the bevel is right up here on the tip of the of the tool you basically need to rotate your handle out a bit not quite that far obviously but you don't want to be pushing the heel or the bevel into the bowl as you're making the cut so let's make a nice bevel riding supported cut but without pushing into the bowl now i'm going to put force down into the tool rest [Laughter] you can hear the sounds different too [Music] that bevel is just following the cut in but it's it's acting as a guide but it's a light gentle guide it's it's floating or just riding gently behind that cut to guide your cut but it shouldn't be pushed into the bowl let's go ahead and look at that finish now now all those waves are gone and we have a nice smooth finish so that particular tool mark was created by forcing the bowl gouge into the bowl instead of down onto the tool rest okay let's take a close-up look at probably the most common tool mark issue i'm going to go ahead and create the tool mark here let's take a look at it okay let's take a closer look at this tool mark and how it's created from a little bit different angle we're looking straight down on the bowl gouge here all right now i may have exaggerated it a little bit but when we first start out it can feel like that's how we're cutting and it's very frustrating so what is creating this tool mark we can obviously see the tool marks here what is creating this well we're not riding the bevel properly instead we're we're rotated and we're up on the tip of the cutting edge of the bowl gouge instead we want to bring the bowl gouge back by moving the handle back towards our body and make the bevel parallel to the cutting surface let's take a look at how this will look when it's cleaned up and cut properly i'm going to start out over here so we get a good fresh clean cut you can see how the cut is progressing and that bevel is parallel to the cut surface that is called riding the bevel i have a video all about riding the bevel you can check that out if you'd like okay so there you can see we have a smooth surface compared to what we have before and it's all because we're making that bevel perfectly parallel to the cut surface we don't want to be riding the tip and like the previous tool mark that i showed you with the waves we don't want to be letting that heel rub or we don't want to be pressing the bowl gouge into the bowl cutting material either be sure you're riding the bevel and not on the tip of the tool so you get a nice clean cut and be sure you bring that handle back just a bit to make that bevel level if you're seeing those tool tip riding tool marks across the bowl gouge then just bring the tool back just a bit to make that bevel parallel with the tools with the wood surface to make a nice clean cut okay here is a relatively common tool mark that occurs up on the rim of the bulb and not only is this one annoying but it can be very startling as well let me see if i can recreate this but what happens is we get up here and we present the tool as if we're going to maybe make a start making another cut inside or shape the rim here and we get this kickback and it can happen very quickly and be very very startling let's take a look at that again up close so here we are looking at the at this rim kickback really close now we present the tool and we get this quick jerk back to the left and the tool just kind of skips out of our hand and what it does at the same time is it messes up this rim and makes these nasty tool marks now of course i made multiple ones here but it makes it makes really nasty tool marks all the way around now what just happened well i actually have a video all about how to prevent these skip backs and i go into great detail about why this happens but to cut to the chase what we really need to do is we need to close the flute so let's look at this flute a little bit closer i'm going to use this popsicle stick to show you the level or show you where the flute is oriented what caused the kickback was the fact that i have the flute angled at about a 45 degree angle here or if we use the 12 o'clock position as being the flute straight up i'm in about the 1 30 or 2 o'clock position and when i bring that tool to the rim the end grain will kick this tool back out and that's what makes that kickback so to prevent that what we need to do is we need to close the tool at 90 degrees when we come across that rim so instead of being open like this we need to close the flute completely to 90 degrees now let me go ahead and make a clean cut across here and clean up that rim and i'll show you how to cut the rim without getting that kick back okay so now instead of leaving the instead of leaving the flute open i'm going to go ahead and close it and make the same bevel riding cut across the rim [Music] so so there you can see that just simply closing the flute presents that cutting edge in a way that it doesn't kick back when we're making that rim cut so if you get a rim kickback be sure to close your flute instead of leaving the flute open that way you won't get that kick back and that nasty tool mark that tears up the rim really bad if you're liking this video please do me a favor and click that like button below the screen thank you okay this tool mark issue leaves a nasty rough edge here and this is kind of related to the too fast of a pace tool mark that we saw earlier let's take a look at this one and i'll show you what happens [Music] as you can see i'm leaving a really rough edge here now for roughing out a bowl that's this isn't a really big deal but if i'm trying to make a nice smooth finish then this is an issue so what's happening if you saw what was actually occurring is i was biting off much more than this bowl gouge can handle i was taking too deep of a cut and i was kind of moving pretty quickly but the main issue is the fact that i'm taking a deeper cut than this bowl gouge should take let me do it again so you can see it up close you can see the cut i was actually making is taking up almost the entire left side of the nose and that's a large bite to be taking out with any bowl gouge we change the size of the bowl gouges based on what we're doing so a larger bowl gouge is great for roughing the exterior of a bowl and a smaller bowl gouge is better for making nice finishing cuts however if you just lighten up the cut with any bowl gouge you're going to get a nice smooth finish let me show you what that looks like now so now i'm going to take a lighter cut i'm not going to cut as deep and as aggressive as i was just a moment ago this is a push cut i've got the flute angled towards the cut at about a 45 degree angle and i'm riding the bevel you can see i've got a lot lighter cut going on i've got nice shavings coming off the surface is smooth compared to what it was before let's take a look here there you can see a nice smooth surface versus the the deeper cut that was leaving a rougher surface but again that's okay if you're roughing out a bowl but if you want a nice finished cut you need to take lighter cuts and not be so aggressive with the bite or the size of material that you're removing with each bowl gouge pass when you're working the interior of a bowl especially a small bowl you may start seeing little lines and ridges popping up and you may be riding the bevel the whole time and this can be really frustrating because it's really kind of an unknown what might be happening let me show you what the cut looks like and what and we'll talk about what's happening so if i start here [Applause] you can see these ridges forming let me move the light a little bit so you can get a little bit better example of this but you see these ridges forming in here all right so what's happening i'm riding the bevel i'm making a nice smooth path over there i'm not riding on the tip of the bevel which we know causes tool marks here's what's happening the size of this bevel is relatively large compared to the shape of this small curve so what's occurring is the same time my cutting tip is engaged where it should be the heel is rubbing and burnishing behind me and sometimes actually the heel is kind of pushing the the cutting tip up out of the cut so i'm getting these burnished marks from the heel and i'm getting areas where i'm coming out of the cut so what can we do to prevent this and make a smooth interior cut on a small radius like this for us for a smaller bowl well there's one little trick we need to do to our bowl gouge and we'll go over to the sharpening station so i can share that with you okay so what's happening is this bevel is too tall or too wide to get around that tight radius so what we're going to do is we're going to reduce that heel now we don't need an exact angle or an exact measurement what i do is i use the platform as a little bit of guide what i'm going to do is i'm just going to rock the heel on these the sharpening wheel and this is my more coarse wheel this is an 80 grit cbn wheel and this is going to grind that heel down and we're going to reduce the height of that bevel so that we can turn a tighter radius i'm just holding this against the platform with my thumb right here and i'm rotating the handle with my other hand and just making a nice gentle rocking motion back and forth to grind this heel away [Music] all right it's getting there i'm going to take a little bit more off okay that's looking pretty good you can see how it's reduced the overall height of that bevel edge so let's go ahead and take that back to the bowl and see how it does okay so now i'm going to take the heel reduced bevel and i'm going to present that to the bowl at about a 90 degree angle to start the cut i'm going to do a light cut and i'm just going to bring the handle around [Applause] and there's still there are some real light burnish marks there but much lighter than before and those will stand out very easily the big trick here is like that other tool mark we don't want to be pushing into the wood as we do this we want to just guide that cutting edge around very gently as we pull this handle back it's like kind of like steering a rudder on a boat and we bring this handle back around and make the curve of this cut we just want to make it nice and gentle and ride that bevel all the way across okay the next type of tool mark issue we have is going to be somewhat specific to a thin rimmed bowl what we have here is a thin rimmed bowl that the interior is almost completely removed and we're going to try to work this thin top rim we need to be really careful here because what's happening is when we have a thin walled bowl like this with nothing in the inside those walls are going to flex so it's going to make a lot of sound and it's going to be difficult to cut properly i want you to listen closely to see what this sounds like remember how we talked about listening for the sounds not only are we going to hear those thin walls but we're going to hear the the walls move away from the cut so they're going to be cutting and then they move away and they come back to the cut so there's going to be a clicking or vibrating sound as well as a thin wall sound and there you can see we've got material that's being pulled away from one side but not here because this area was most likely flexing away from the cutting edge and you can see here we have skip marks there's little there's almost little dash lines in here i don't know if you can see that or not but there's almost little dashed lines right here from when the tool is missing skipping and missing now the only way to really avoid this is to leave a mass in the center of the bowl or to leave thick walls and then thin the wall down in a small section leaving that mass there move the mass down a little bit move down the wall a little bit and match up that thickness and continue down the the bowl without returning to the top edge so once you get the thickness the way you want you leave it there and then continue to match that thickness all the way down while you remove that mask the mass in the center of the bowl will hold the bowl together and keep it from flexing much and it'll keep it nice and nice and tight so it's it's a really good way to make a thin walled bowl very securely and have good smooth walls without tool marks on them okay so i hope this video helps you understand that tool marks don't just happen there are specific reasons why tool marks happen and there are some basic issues that kind of seem to be common one of them has to do with riding the bevel now i have a video all about that you might want to check that out if we're not riding the bevel this tool is not going to perform properly and we're going to have issues we're either going to be up on the tip which is going to be scraping across the wood and it's going to be leaving tool marks or we could be pushing that heel in and be leaving burnishing marks too and actually the burnishing marks can be worse because those are hard to sand out because what you're doing you're crushing the ingrained fibers when you burnish with the heel so we don't want to push either so that's why some people call it floating the bevel i like to call it riding the bevel but it's the same thing that bevel is essentially a guide for our cut and it just kind of glides behind the cutting edge you don't want the cutting edge to be going into the wood but you also don't want the bevel going into the wood either so it just kind of floats and glides or rides right behind the cutting edge so that's a technique you really want to nail down really good the other one is don't push the tool into the wood when you're making the cut because that's going to give you those little swirl marks and those swirl marks get progressively worse they can happen on the outside of the bowl or on the inside of the bowl and as you keep trying to do that if you're pushing in you're going to keep repeating those and making them more dramatic as you make those additional cuts so the way to get around that is just to make light cuts and put the pressure down on the tool rest not into the bowl itself so i hope these examples have helped show you some ways to solve your tool mark issues i know when i was starting out that i had several of these issues occur on a regular basis and it was very frustrating but it wasn't until i stopped and paid attention to what i was doing and figured out how i can correct that that i overcame these issues and made these things these tool marks a thing of the past which is great because once you get past these and you can make a smooth surface on pretty much any turned bull you're going to have a great time making all the bowls that you enjoy making you might want to consider checking out my wood bowl turning start to finish online e-course in that course we use the bowl gouge to turn bowls and we're turning bowls together they're very reasonable sized bowls that anybody can turn but we're using the bowl gouge and as we progress through the lessons of that course i'm going to show you different techniques with the bowl gouge and you're going to build up your confidence in the use of the bowl gouge and you're going to see that the bowl gouge is an amazing tool that can help you do pretty much anything you can imagine when it comes to turning so check out that course i've got a link in the description below all right guys i hope this video has been helpful for you i hope you've had some great takeaways here that you can apply directly to your turning today or whenever you turn next and don't forget i've got a website that's just absolutely loaded with information about turning wood bowls if you're curious about turning wood bowls or if you're deep into turning wood bowls you're going to want to check out this site it's turnawoodbowl.com if you've liked this video do me a huge favor click that like button below the screen right now i greatly appreciate that that's a huge help for my channel and if you see any other videos of mine that you like also click that like button on those videos too thank you and if you're not subscribing click that subscribe button and click the bell that way you'll be notified when my next videos come out because you're not going to want to miss them i've got tons of great information that's going to help you turn the wood bowls that you imagine all right guys thanks for watching and as always until next time happy turning you

Channel: Turn A Wood Bowl

Views: 32,717

Rating: 4.9903769 out of 5

Keywords: Wood Turning Tool Marks — How To Avoid Video, tool marks, bowl gouge, riding the bevel, woodturning, Kent Weakley, Turn a wood bowl, wood bowl, how to, trouble, issues, problems, rough, wood turning, wood lathe, bowl turning, bowl turning techniques, woodturning tools, wood turning tips, woodturning bowl, wood turning lathe, how to use a bowl gouge, wood turning bowls for beginners, bowl turning basics, wood turning basics beginners, wood lathe basics, Bowl gouge cuts

Id: 1z9okRcM18M

Length: 28min 52sec (1732 seconds)

Published: Sat Apr 24 2021