Tactical bowl gouge

[Erik Johanson]

So I am pretty sure I am not the first person to do this but I have not seen one as of yet and I was pretty impressed with how it turned out so I thought I would share.

A student of mine and I were working on learning/teaching each other the basics of bowl turning, me doing both the teaching and the learning and the student doing most of the learning. We ran into a problem while poorly attempting to hollow out the bowl form he had created, we could not see the where we were cutting. Plainly put we needed more light. the area of my shop where I have the lathe squeezed into has very little light and even less space to mount one. Our solution was the Tactical bowl gouge, we just MacGyvered a small flashlight onto the bowl gouge and it worked pretty well.

I have posted some pictures of the apparatus, hope you enjoy and at the least get a good chuckle out of it.195620195621195622195623195624

[Kyle Iwamoto]

MacGyvered? That's a term I have not heard for a while. Good job. I may have to steal that idea, since I'm getting old eyes and need all the light I can get.

[Tim Thiebaut]

I have to admit I have tried this myself but with this light...

http://www.streamlight.com/product/product.aspx?pid=208

...after just a couple of minutes I gave it up, I felt like it interfered with the safe control of the tool, for me, even as thin as the neck on this one is the body is still fairly thick and was in the way of getting a good grip. But it was an experiment for me and had to try it. Just please be careful, as I am sure you know things can get out of hand very quickly, but if it works for you and you feel safe then I am glad its working for ya!

[Erik Johanson]

We did notice what you were describing due to the larger diameter for the hand to reach around to control the tool with the added flashlight. We found that with this set up that we no longer had the ability to make aggressive cuts and were left to very light cuts or scrapping cuts to clean and shape the inside of the bowl.

[allen thunem]

interesting idea. part of your problem with having to resort to lighter cuts might have been the fact, if iam seeing ithe pics correctly is that you are using a spindle gouge. nothing wrong with that but a long handled bowl gouge would make your task a bit easier or even a scraper.
just my two cents

[Olaf Vogel]

Those cheap LED flashlights are great for this. I've got a couple of deep hollowing tools set up this way. My only problem is that the vibration tends to kill the small amount of electronics inside the light. Otherwise it works great! sometimes I turn off all the other lights and just keep hollowing until I can see the interior light shine through.

I've toyed with the idea of mounting a fiber optic light on the end of the tool (saw it somewhere on a site), which would eliminate the vibration issue and allow me a better view inside, but just haven't gotten off my butt to build one.

Olaf

[Erik Johanson]

Allan - That just might describe why we are having so much difficulty. I am a novice at best and for some reason actually thought the gouge we were using was a bowl gouge and that something was off with my technique. I am thinking I might postpone my intentions of added this to my curriculum just yet, there seems to be a need for some more learning on my part. Thanks

[Harry Robinette]

I've used a battery flex light from H Freight, the flex piece fits down the flute and lights up right were your cutting.