Swan Neck?

[Burt Alcantara]

Sorry, I don't get the swan neck. What's the difference between the swan and a cutter set at 45 degrees from the shaft?

I've never used the swan but have used offset cutters. Offsetting can get into some acute angles where swans seem limited.

Am I missing something?

Thanks,
Burt

[Bernie Weishapl]

Burt I use a swan neck for getting from the opening of a HF to the sharp corners especially when you get some fairly wide HF's. It makes it so much easier to reach into those corners. If your HF is pretty rounded then the 45* tool works just fine.

[Bob Haverstock]

Burt,

I'm new at this, so I may be wrong,,,again. When I use my hand made swan neck chise,l it is to reach into the cavity of a hollow form to in creace the interior diameter. The head of the swan reaches through the opening of the hollow form and nibbles away at the interior.

The purpose of the neck is two fold. It creates an offset to reach in with and it puts the cutting edge on the centerline of the tool shank to prevent the tool from catching and rotating. The shank, not the neck rest on the tool rest.

Bob

[Kaptan J.W. Meek]

I have a large swan neck.. Even though I use it when absolutley necessary, I don't enjoy it. I thought it would make hollowing easy on shallow hollow forms but I was wrong. I never seem to get the angle of the cutter right.. Lots of catches, long sessions of very ineffective turning. ( lots of noise/chatter, with small amounts of shavings) Nobody seems to be able to tell me how to make it work better. Either it's trying to catch, or it seems like it needs sharpening. Maybe I'll figger it out eventually.

[Burt Alcantara]

I'm still not convinced. The basic concept, as described by manufacturers, is to have the point of the cutter on the same plane as the shaft. I've yet to see how that makes any difference.

Pro-Form and Rolly Monroe tools have adjustable swivel/pivot heads that put the cutter beyond the plane of the shaft. What little I've seen of those tools have impressed me with their control and stock removal. Unfortunately, they are quite spendy.

[Mark Burge]

Burt, I think that what ever gets the cutting edge to where you want to make a cut and lets you support the cut without chatter or catches is the point. The main thing I have found about a swan neck is to make sure that I don't get the neck portion on the toolrest. That makes for certain chatter. That said, I use straight tools as much as I can and for me that is usually my bowl gouge or my round nose scraper. My $0.02 - Mark

[Wally Dickerman]

Burt, I've been using my Dennis Stewart swan neck, arm-brace tool since 1987. As you can imagine, many HF's. The idea of the swan neck is that you have no torque (pulling down of the cutter), if used properly. The cutter lines up with the shaft of the tool. It must be used with the swan neck portion forward of the tool rest.

A very distinct advantage of the Stewart tool is the the cutter can swivel, allowing you to present the cutter to the wood at it's best angle, depending on where you are cutting inside the vessel.

Sorby and Don Pencil have both copied Dennis's tool with their own versions.

Wally

[Tim Cleveland]

I have a large swan neck.. Even though I use it when absolutley necessary, I don't enjoy it. I thought it would make hollowing easy on shallow hollow forms but I was wrong. I never seem to get the angle of the cutter right.. Lots of catches, long sessions of very ineffective turning. ( lots of noise/chatter, with small amounts of shavings) Nobody seems to be able to tell me how to make it work better. Either it's trying to catch, or it seems like it needs sharpening. Maybe I'll figger it out eventually.
If you are getting lots of chatter and not cutting efficiently you might need an even larger swan neck tool. In the past I have found that going with a larger tool usually fixed the problem for me.

The point of having the cutter on the same plane as the shaft is that you are cutting on a supported edge. In order to cut without catching you need to keep only the straight section of the shaft on the tool rest and tilt the tool slightly to the left (which is why many of the swan neck tools are made out of round bar and not square) and down.

Tim

[Jeff Nicol]

Burt, The main reason to use a swan neck tool is to hollow of a vessel that has a small opening in the top. If you use a straight tool with a 45 offset you can't make the side wall thickness even from rim to base. If you have a 8" round vessel and a 1" opening you will have to use the swan neck to make the turn other wise the transition from top to sides will be much thicker. I hope this helps, so try a HF with a tiny opening and you will see what I mean.

Jeff

[Ryan Baker]

If you are getting lots of chatter and not cutting efficiently you might need an even larger swan neck tool. In the past I have found that going with a larger tool usually fixed the problem for me.

I'm going to disagree with that, assuming you are talking about a larger cutter and not just a larger diameter bar. A larger cutter takes a heavier bite and tends to be more grabby than a smaller one. Too small of a shank can cause problems by allowing the tool to flex. You should generally use the largest shaft tool that will fit through the neck and allow you to move around enough.


The point of having the cutter on the same plane as the shaft is that you are cutting on a supported edge. In order to cut without catching you need to keep only the straight section of the shaft on the tool rest and tilt the tool slightly to the left (which is why many of the swan neck tools are made out of round bar and not square) and down.

Tim

Agree. Be sure that you are keeping the tool rest back farther so that only the straight part of the tool is on the rest. If the curved neck is on the tool rest, you are creating a large rotational force that will be hard to handle. As mentioned, the idea is to keep the cutter point in line with the shaft so that there is no "lever" action putting rotational force on the tool.

The 45 degree cutters on a straight shaft (Ellesworth style) are very nice tools at times and can be pretty versatile. The trick there is to not extend the cutter too far out, because it will put too much force on the tool to control well. Any more than about 1" max will be a pain to use.

I find that I like to have a variety of styles and sizes of hollowing tools for different tasks. Some just work better for certain jobs.

[Ruth Niles]

Very interesting responses. I just bought John Jordan's small set, turned 3 small HFs but am nervous(?) or expectant of a catch. So far no catch and I do think I'll get better with practice. Now there's a concept! :D

[neil mackay]

So far no catch and I do think I'll get better with practice. Now there's a concept!

....and that pretty well sums it up, as we learn more, the better at it we get. Much of our problems are just that, a lacking.

[Ryan Baker]

I have the John Jordan small set and they are some of my favorite hollowing tools (when the size is appropriate). There's just something about the shape of that swan tool that works better than most swan tools.

[Curt Fuller]

Burt, if you sight down the handle of a swan neck too, the business part of the tool, the cutter or scraper, is straight in line with the handle. With a bent or angled hollowing tool the cutter is anywhere from just off the center line of the handle to way off the centerline. The difference in using them is that the swan neck tool, if used properly with the portion of the tool with the curved swan neck in front of the tool rest, doesn't allow the wood to have leverage that is trying to twist the tool in your hands. With a bent tool, the pressure of the tool against the wood creates leverage, the more the bend the more leverage, which twists the entire tool. Bent hollowers are usually small for hollowing small hollowforms, ornaments, etc. Larger bent hollowing tools are usually meant to be used in a captured hollowing set up or at least with some type of arm brace to help control the twisting action. Using a swan neck tool takes some getting used to because it breaks one of the fundamental rules of turning by hanging way out over the tool rest, much more than you would ever normally want to do with any other tool. But if you don't hang it out there it becomes a bent hollowing tool and the leverage on the tool will be more than you can hang on to usually.

Hope that helps you understand it.

[Burt Alcantara]

I'm sure you can all agree that David Ellsworth is a turner of the highest caliber. He turns his hollow forms using 9/16" shafts bent in various places. No swan necks there.

I have a set of his tools and like them so much that I began to hollow manually instead of using my articulated arm. Not to say I'll never use the arm. In fact, I'll probably use the Ellsworth tools in the arm.

In some cases, I find manually hollowing is easier then using the arm. I can get a better feel and angle. As I don't have a swan neck, I have no basis of comparison. But, I haven't had any problems with the offset cutter, unless I try to do a kamakazi cut into the side.

I appreciate all of the comments on this thread. Very helpful and enlightening.

Thanks,
Burt

[Ryan Baker]

David Ellesworth's bent tools do work very well. Nothing wrong with that. But they don't have the cutter hanging out particularly far either. Used carefully, they are fine to use. But the farther out you stick the cutter, the more difficult it becomes. Try using Ellesworth's High Shoulder tool, which is essentially a bent tool with cutter hanging about 3-4" out (meant to cut around the top corner of wide hollowforms with small openings). That tool is almost impossible to deal with -- especially on dry or partially dry wood.

I say just get all of the above :)

[Jim Underwood]

I have learned about this subject from the school of hard knocks.

And I do mean hard...

A few years back, I made a small hollowing tool out of an allen wrench. It was a simple right angle tool for hollowing Christmas ornaments. One day I had a friend over to help him make an ornament. While he was using the tool it had a catch, and spun round in his hand. Fortunately he wasn't hurt.

Since it was my tool, I endeavoured to show him how to use it. (You see where this is going yet?) I had the same results, only much worse. The tool caught, spun around in my grasp, the shank of the tool slamming down on the edge of my finger, pinching it between the rest and the shank. Needless to say, I had a big hole in my finger that was leaking....:eek: It needed a band-aid.... or two... (I don't want to imagine what could have happened with a full size tool...)

The very next time I used that tool, it had been heated and bent into a swan neck..:mad:

And yes, you have to keep the neck off the tool rest or the mechanical advantage is lost.

[Steve Schlumpf]

Burt - I have both a swan neck and 45* cutters and use both. The swan neck allows you to get to the top of the shoulder area when using a fairly small opening. The 45* cutter requires a larger opening to get the tool into the form as well as be able to reach the high shoulder area.

I use the 45* for the bulk of the work, then change over to the swan neck with a small straight cutter to finish up the shoulder area.

[Tim Cleveland]

[QUOTE=Ryan Baker;1127618]I'm going to disagree with that, assuming you are talking about a larger cutter and not just a larger diameter bar. A larger cutter takes a heavier bite and tends to be more grabby than a smaller one. Too small of a shank can cause problems by allowing the tool to flex. You should generally use the largest shaft tool that will fit through the neck and allow you to move around enough.

Sorry Ryan, I should have specified that I meant only a larger shaft, I agree that a larger cutter would only make the problem worse.

Tim