Tool to "shave" out of round mounted blank?

[Joe Vincent 63]

Does anyone have a recommended tool for shaving the high spots of a large bowl blank once mounted to the lathe (beside chain saw)? I was looking at a Rigid Fuego sawzall with a tree cutting blade (smaller, one handed sawzall), but wanted to see if there were any other recommended options.

Thanks!

Joe

[Hayes Rutherford]

I find the Arbortech Industrial woodcarver works pretty good.

[Bob Hamilton]

I find a hand power planer to be handy for trimming the high spots, but it would depend on how much material needed to be removed. A power planer takes wood off pretty quick but I wouldn't want to take off 2" with it.

Bob

[Sean Hughto]

I use a Stanley 40 scrub plane.

[Kyle Iwamoto]

I use a vintage Witherby <sp?> draw knife.

[Sean Hughto]

A chisel or large gouge and mallet can do the job too.

[Craig Matheny]

Go to Harbor freight buy the 22 tooth Carving Disk adapter 207060 item# 7697 for a 4" or 4.5" hand grinder you now have a "cheap" yes cheap not inexpensive "Arbortech Industrial woodcarver wanna-be"

[Chris Burgess]

Charles Neil uses the Lancelot (HF) for carving out chair seats and says the work great.



Go to Harbor freight buy the 22 tooth Carving Disk adapter 207060 item# 7697 for a 4" or 4.5" hand grinder you now have a "cheap" yes cheap not inexpensive "Arbortech Industrial woodcarver wanna-be"

[Jim Underwood]

Gulp! :eek: Now that's a scary looking thing... I'd sure want some insurance between that thing and my hands...

[Prashun Patel]

You can use an angle grinder with a backing disc and 24grit fiber discs. ($20 for the backer and the disc)

You can use an angle grinder with a coarse carbide 'kutzall' cutting wheel. ($50 for the wheel)

On green wood, though, these can gum up quickly though.

A block plane works well.

If the spots are small, then I've had good luck using a large forstner bit and a drill to take the hump down.

[curtis rosche]

i use a sawzall, but i would constantly worry with my smaller older althe about the forces on the lathe. if the blade digs in, it transfers that motion to your headstock, your chuck, your indexing pin that your useing to hold the wood in place while cutting (nearly ripped mine out) on my larger lathe its not much of an issue cause i use a faceplate for roughing and it doesnt have an index so i just wedge it in place. what i will normally do it drill holes on the line i want to take off, kinda like how they drill holes to blast out slabs of marble or granite, then go at it with a large chisel and hammer. depending on the wood it is faster i think cause some will just pop right off, which is quicker than sawing

[Sean Hughto]

Just to clarify - I use my bandsaw to cut blanks nearly round and then a bowl gouge can get things to perfectly round, even if I didn't cut very carefully on the bandsaw. The only time I really need to shave is with big blanks that will use my full swing - 16" -in such cases a slight mess up on the bandsaw or in mounting the faceplate can mean that I have high spots that hit the bed/ways. I use the chisel or plane with the lathe off just to take down those high spots until the blank will rotate freely and I can just turn on the lathe and use the bowl gouge.

[Steve Kubien]

I'm with Kyle and use a drawknife. If the blank isn't too heavy, I will mark the high spots, take it off the lathe and use an axe.

[Leo Van Der Loo]

My lathe makes wood round :eek: doesn't yours ?? :D
Besides sometimes you don't even want the blank to start out round, or even the bowl to be round on the outside, so unless you want to maximize the size of the blank to fit the lathe I wouldn't bother, chainsaw or bandsaw would be all that's needed or not even that :).

207086 207088 207089 207091 207093 207094 207103

[Steve Kubien]

And if the high spots hit the ways and prevent the wood from spinning?

[Bob Bergstrom]

Portable planner. Works great and pretty safe to use. I only use it when the corner hit the ways on my 3520. A 1" gouge works well when the wood will spin.

[Leo Van Der Loo]

Can you read Steve?? "So unless you want to maximize the size of the blank to fit the lathe I would not bother"

[Fred Belknap]

Leo nice to see you back on the forum, haven't seen you for a while. I like your set up.

[Leo Van Der Loo]

Thanks Fred :D, I don't have the time for spending much time here, as I/We have bought a new place and have been moving "stuff" to it, long haul of 1700 km, then trying to keep ahead in our "old" place for the showings of it, cleaning mowing etc.

Also no cable in the new place, or other arrangement for my computer yet, nor a computer, so it will still be sporadic that I'm going to be able to visit for the foreseeable future, some things do come first :)

[Steve Kubien]

Leo, normally I try to read but run-on sentences tend to lose me. Thanks though.

[Russell Neyman]

Leo, your balls-out approach is something I can relate to. Your photos show highly-irregular turnings, objects mounted in soft jaws with no visible means of support, and no face shield by the turner. I bet you and share one type of project in common: "missile" bowls!

All joking aside, there's a chance the original poster has a lighter lathe, and in my experience those can jump all over the shop with anything slightly out of round and unbalanced. Also, some lathes don't have a slow speed capability (mine goes down to 750, which can occasionally result in some pretty substantial vibration. It's also possible he's simply trying to get the blank down to size so that it can fit between the shaft and the bed. If you have a 16 or 14 inch reach, it's pretty darn tough to actually end up with a bowl that size, so we often cut our blanks slightly too large.

I like the axe idea. There are those thin, one-sided ones that they used to trim timber square in the old days, and it seems to me they'd work fairly well. You'd just have to lay the blank flat on it's back, place the axe along the line marking the excess, and whack away.

Having said that, I've used everything from a chainsaw to a power plane to a drawknife. Depends of the amount of material to be removed and the type of wood.

[Scott Hackler]

Holy Cow Leo! That last picture is great. I cant get over how darn big that blank is. What was the diameter of that piece of wood?

[Mark Levitski]

Joe, I agree w/ Leo--within reason, use your lathe tools. For a bit, you'll be "shaving" empty space until the high spots come into round and into your tool.

Otherwise I agree with the others: use a bandsaw or chainsaw to cut your blank as round as you can before mounting on the lathe. Then, if you have some real knobs to cut off to shorten your time w/lathe tools, then use some of the other suggestions. I use either an electric chainsaw or an Arbortech wheel on a grinder with the piece still on the lathe.

Sheesh, we're turners, aren't we?

[David DeCristoforo]

Go Leo! Let em have it... Real men like their wood big and... oh never mind...

[Leo Van Der Loo]

Missile bowls ?, sorry for having to dissapoint you Russell, never (knock on wood) have had one after going from 3 jaw metal chucks I used in the old country (that's before 1967), but for one small block that came loose as I started turning in reverse and I had not planned for that, it did hit me in the lip, no blood but a lesson learned.

I think that project and pieces should be in line/size with the equipment you have/use, and as I said only for those times that you are trying to make the largest possible piece in size to fit the lathe would I get it rounded with a bandsaw, even a mounted piece can usually easily be taken off the lathe to saw some more off the piece, like unscrew a faceplate or chuck with the piece still attached :D

[Leo Van Der Loo]

Scott I don't remember the exact size, but has got to be close to 30 inches as the lathe will handle about 33", so maybe 28 or 29 I think

[Hilel Salomon]

I think that the original thread wasn't about making a blank round, but was an inquiry into how to handle protrusions. Most of the answers addressed this. You can round out the bottom of a blank on the BS, but sometimes knobby growths or former branches can be unwelcome in a lathe. Certainly they can be dealt with on a lathe, but the process is harder and lengthier than if one cuts these off with chainsaw, planer, grinder, sawzall or something else. When they're small, I just mount the blank. When they're big, I cut them off.
Hilel