Bill Grumbine
02-18-2006, 11:14 AM
Greetings all
In another thread on this forum, there has developed a spirited discussion on safety. It has gotten somewhat acrimonious, and I am partly to blame for that. I apologize for my part. I do want to say some things here that need to be said though, regarding safety on the lathe. I speak from a background of experience in teaching in all sorts of venues. I have taught elementary age school children to grandparents, retarded men from a group home to rocket scientists (literally!). I have had students from 4 foot nothing to 6' 8", and evey body size and type imaginable, including one man who had to stand on two crutches to be at the lathe! There is not a lot that I have not seen or heard about when it comes to newbies and turning.
Many of you who know me even a little bit know that I am not much for subjectivism - i.e. I am a black and white, right and wrong sort of guy. In many cases, it either is, or it isn't. But when it comes to the lathe, all of a sudden a lot of grey appears, and that is the subject of this post. For reference, this subject has been discussed on other fora, but we aren't there, we are here.
The question is, what is safe on the lathe. The answer is, it depends. I have seen people use everything from dental tools to chainsaws :eek: to shape the wood on the lathe. I would certainly draw the line at a chainsaw, but there is a whole lot inbetween that needs looked at. I am going to make some general observations, and I hope others will contribute to this.
We all start at the same place on the lathe - the beginning. I started on a crappy piece of Chinese junk that broke and scared me half to death. It cut five years off my turning career because it was that long before I picked up a lathe tool again. I have a student right now who started out as a rank beginner with a Oneway 2436 and every single attachment Oneway makes. The same catches on that Oneway are going to have different results than they would on my old Chinese lathe.
I don't want this to become overly long or pedantic so I will (try to) get to the point. When we buy a lathe, or any tool for that matter, there are certain things that are set in stone. For example, we cannot avoid the laws of physics. But, there are a lot of things that are not set in stone. The size of our lathe and the quality of our tools are all variables in the equation. A small poorly built lathe with minimal power is not going to have the same "danger quotient" that a large powerful machine will have. A person with some experience will have less risk at some operations than a person with no experience.
We all need to decide for ourselves, what is safe for me to do or try, and what might not be such a good idea. This is the realm of personal responsibility. I happen to think that we also have a responsibility to others, but not everyone else thinks that way. But how much responsibility do we have, and how should we exercise it? There are things I do on my lathe that other people tell me they would never attempt. I did not do them years ago, but as I gained in experience, I made the attempt. There were lots of times when I came down from the shop with banged and bleeding knuckles from a moment's inattention, but it was a concious decision on my part to make the attempt. There is a lot of information out on the web today, stuff that did not even exist when I started turning back in 1993. We can read and study, and then we need to think and make a decision.
In the above referenced discussion, there is a difference of opinion as to the safety and efficacy of using a bench chisel on the lathe. I spoke out very strongly that I did not see a problem, or at least no more problem that the same person using a skew or straight chisel with the same level of experience. This morning I decided to put my money where my mouth is, and went to the shop for a brief experiment. The results are below.
<img src="http://www.enter.net/~ultradad/benchskew01.jpg">
Here on the ways of my lathe, you can see my large skew, and next to it my beater Sears chisel. This is the chisel I use for wood where there may be nails, rocks, or other things that are bad for chisel blades. It is small, cheap, and short. In fact, it is just about the very same length (a fraction of an inch longer) than the metal on my skew chisel. It is also somewhat thinner.
I dug out a chunk of reject wood from my tap handle job. This was a 2 5/8" square by 9" long piece of tulip poplar with a large bark inclusion in it. I put it on the Poolewood and fired it up to a relatively slow 1000 rpm. I usually start these handles at 2900 rpm. I stuck my unsharpened rusty beater chisel into the wood, and it cut! It cut just like my skew for the most part, as long as I limited myself to simple cuts.
<img src="http://www.enter.net/~ultradad/benchskew02.jpg">
This is a blurry picture of the tool in the cutting position. I had to do all this by myself and the camera moved or something. There should be enough info here to get the point across. The bevel is down, and I roughed the square to round as I have taught many people to do in the past.
<img src="http://www.enter.net/~ultradad/benchskew03.jpg">
Here is a better pic of the results. I was able to get a reasonably smooth surface on a large piece of wood at a slow rpm with a run of the mill bench chisel. It gave me a lot of grief on the pommel cut, as you can see from the blown out corners and ragged shoulder. I think it stands to reason that if I can get similar cuts with a tool at my level of experience, then a newbie without experience is going to have the same experience - similar cuts regardless of the tool used, and in the case of a noob, lousy cuts.
When I first started turning, I used my skew chisel for cutting large ragged holes in the wood, removing pieces of work from the lathe while it was still running, and giving me an excuse to go change my shorts. I got better at it though, and I suspect that regardless of the tool, I would have improved. I still have and use that very same skew. These things are going to happen to us all if we are going to push the envelope of our skills and experiences. If I had not pushed it, I would not be turning stuff like this:
<img src="http://www.enter.net/~ultradad/cherrypropeller01.jpg">
<img src="http://www.enter.net/~ultradad/cherrypropeller02.jpg">
I would not recommend that a beginner start out like this, but then that is his (or her!) decision to make. Happy turning to all, and I hope to see some other thoughts on this topic.
Bill
In another thread on this forum, there has developed a spirited discussion on safety. It has gotten somewhat acrimonious, and I am partly to blame for that. I apologize for my part. I do want to say some things here that need to be said though, regarding safety on the lathe. I speak from a background of experience in teaching in all sorts of venues. I have taught elementary age school children to grandparents, retarded men from a group home to rocket scientists (literally!). I have had students from 4 foot nothing to 6' 8", and evey body size and type imaginable, including one man who had to stand on two crutches to be at the lathe! There is not a lot that I have not seen or heard about when it comes to newbies and turning.
Many of you who know me even a little bit know that I am not much for subjectivism - i.e. I am a black and white, right and wrong sort of guy. In many cases, it either is, or it isn't. But when it comes to the lathe, all of a sudden a lot of grey appears, and that is the subject of this post. For reference, this subject has been discussed on other fora, but we aren't there, we are here.
The question is, what is safe on the lathe. The answer is, it depends. I have seen people use everything from dental tools to chainsaws :eek: to shape the wood on the lathe. I would certainly draw the line at a chainsaw, but there is a whole lot inbetween that needs looked at. I am going to make some general observations, and I hope others will contribute to this.
We all start at the same place on the lathe - the beginning. I started on a crappy piece of Chinese junk that broke and scared me half to death. It cut five years off my turning career because it was that long before I picked up a lathe tool again. I have a student right now who started out as a rank beginner with a Oneway 2436 and every single attachment Oneway makes. The same catches on that Oneway are going to have different results than they would on my old Chinese lathe.
I don't want this to become overly long or pedantic so I will (try to) get to the point. When we buy a lathe, or any tool for that matter, there are certain things that are set in stone. For example, we cannot avoid the laws of physics. But, there are a lot of things that are not set in stone. The size of our lathe and the quality of our tools are all variables in the equation. A small poorly built lathe with minimal power is not going to have the same "danger quotient" that a large powerful machine will have. A person with some experience will have less risk at some operations than a person with no experience.
We all need to decide for ourselves, what is safe for me to do or try, and what might not be such a good idea. This is the realm of personal responsibility. I happen to think that we also have a responsibility to others, but not everyone else thinks that way. But how much responsibility do we have, and how should we exercise it? There are things I do on my lathe that other people tell me they would never attempt. I did not do them years ago, but as I gained in experience, I made the attempt. There were lots of times when I came down from the shop with banged and bleeding knuckles from a moment's inattention, but it was a concious decision on my part to make the attempt. There is a lot of information out on the web today, stuff that did not even exist when I started turning back in 1993. We can read and study, and then we need to think and make a decision.
In the above referenced discussion, there is a difference of opinion as to the safety and efficacy of using a bench chisel on the lathe. I spoke out very strongly that I did not see a problem, or at least no more problem that the same person using a skew or straight chisel with the same level of experience. This morning I decided to put my money where my mouth is, and went to the shop for a brief experiment. The results are below.
<img src="http://www.enter.net/~ultradad/benchskew01.jpg">
Here on the ways of my lathe, you can see my large skew, and next to it my beater Sears chisel. This is the chisel I use for wood where there may be nails, rocks, or other things that are bad for chisel blades. It is small, cheap, and short. In fact, it is just about the very same length (a fraction of an inch longer) than the metal on my skew chisel. It is also somewhat thinner.
I dug out a chunk of reject wood from my tap handle job. This was a 2 5/8" square by 9" long piece of tulip poplar with a large bark inclusion in it. I put it on the Poolewood and fired it up to a relatively slow 1000 rpm. I usually start these handles at 2900 rpm. I stuck my unsharpened rusty beater chisel into the wood, and it cut! It cut just like my skew for the most part, as long as I limited myself to simple cuts.
<img src="http://www.enter.net/~ultradad/benchskew02.jpg">
This is a blurry picture of the tool in the cutting position. I had to do all this by myself and the camera moved or something. There should be enough info here to get the point across. The bevel is down, and I roughed the square to round as I have taught many people to do in the past.
<img src="http://www.enter.net/~ultradad/benchskew03.jpg">
Here is a better pic of the results. I was able to get a reasonably smooth surface on a large piece of wood at a slow rpm with a run of the mill bench chisel. It gave me a lot of grief on the pommel cut, as you can see from the blown out corners and ragged shoulder. I think it stands to reason that if I can get similar cuts with a tool at my level of experience, then a newbie without experience is going to have the same experience - similar cuts regardless of the tool used, and in the case of a noob, lousy cuts.
When I first started turning, I used my skew chisel for cutting large ragged holes in the wood, removing pieces of work from the lathe while it was still running, and giving me an excuse to go change my shorts. I got better at it though, and I suspect that regardless of the tool, I would have improved. I still have and use that very same skew. These things are going to happen to us all if we are going to push the envelope of our skills and experiences. If I had not pushed it, I would not be turning stuff like this:
<img src="http://www.enter.net/~ultradad/cherrypropeller01.jpg">
<img src="http://www.enter.net/~ultradad/cherrypropeller02.jpg">
I would not recommend that a beginner start out like this, but then that is his (or her!) decision to make. Happy turning to all, and I hope to see some other thoughts on this topic.
Bill