turning green and then turning dry-advice

[Hilel Salomon]

Patience has never been one of my very few virtues. I find myself alway finishing a bowl from a green blank. On smaller pieces the result isn't too bad, but occasionally, I'll want to improve or finish a piece and it will be so out of round as to render it virtually impossible to turn. This happened most recently with a piece of pawlonia (sp??) which I turned in a hurry. When I tried to re-turn it, I wound up making a platter out of a bowl-not the first time!! What do you folks do when a piece is out of round and needs work? I gouged this so badly that I had to spend nearly an hour with 36, then 50 sandpaper.
As long as I'm in the advice seeking mode. How is it that the turners who make these videos or demonstrate at shows get perfectly squared bottoms or tops and mine are never, never, never squared. Most of my bowls are as cockeyed as I am. Please don't advise patience.... I just turned 68 (yesterday) and I can only change so much.
Thanks, Hilel.

[Dario Octaviano]

Hilel,

Like you I am not a patient man LOL.

What I learned is either you commit or not. Meaning, if you want to rough turn then final turn later after it dried a few months later...OR...turn the green down to completion and live with it. If you try to change it later (and that can be just an hour on some wood), it may be too late.

Re: square edge, I use my bowl gouge coming in rotated almost 90 degrees (flute facing my right)...works for me.

Take it as an advise from a newbie.

[Hilel Salomon]

You're right. Sometimes a larger bowl will change while it's still in the chuck!!
What I meant by squaring it is how does one position the tool rest so that it is square? I can turn it fairly evenly, but in order to get it square, I eyeball it. Obviously my technique is very faulty. Sometimes I'll finish a bottom and the bowl will tilt dramatically... so my eyeballing isn't very good. I see experienced turners just position the tool rest without even trying to eyeball it and the bottom is squared. Is it a Carnival trick? Of course I also see them using skews without tearing the wood so I suspect that it is a Carny trick.

[Dario Octaviano]

Are you saying that your turning tilt after you turned them?

Are you not cutting your bottom on the lathe? If so it should always be square no matter how you position your tool rest. Spinning wood sliced with a tool will always be square (unless you move the tool before the wood makes a complete turn).

Either that or I am missing your question (by a mile).:D

[Hilel Salomon]

It wouldn't be the first time that I'm screwed up, but why would the bottom alway be squared? If you keep the tool the same distance from the tool rest to the bowl as you make your cut, wouldn't if follow that an angled tool rest would lead to an angled bottom? On a small foot I guess it wouldn't be noticeable, but is that true of a larger one? One of my many problems is that I'm not too good with visualizing things. I can remember about 1000 phone numbers and 1000's of historical dates, but have a hard time remembering what my wife was wearing this morning- I know, I know, a nightie, but I mean what color? Just kidding, but I really am confused about this. Thanks for taking the trouble.

[Bernie Weishapl]

Hilel I use Dave Smiths method of drying which is soaking the green roughed bowl in denatured alcohol for 36 to 48 hrs. From there I wrap them in brown paper grocery sack and let them dry for 2 to 4 weeks. Then put them on the lathe and finish turning them. I leave the bowl thickness 1/10 or the diameter. A 10 to 12 inch bowl will have walls 1" or so thick. Using this method my bowls turn out pretty decent.

If I turn them green to finish the thinner you make them the less they will warp. You just have to accept what you get. When doing them start to finish I haven't had one that did not warp from slightly to all over with the exception of the 3 mesquite bowls. I turned the mesquite from green to finish and they still haven't moved 3 months later.

I also agree with Dario that the lip of the bowl should be sqaure unless you are moving the gouge. When doing the bottom I take the bowl and chuck off the headstock, put it on a adaptor in the tailstock so it can be mounted in my donut chuck or Cole Jaws squarely. Then your bottom must be square or again it may be your tool presentation. Hope this helps.

[Dario Octaviano]

Hilel,

The tool rest angle or any position won't matter. The cutting tip of the tool will still be at the same point...unless you change it. The spinning wood will take care of itself.

[Hilel Salomon]

Thank you Dario and Bernie,

I'm still confused. If, for example, you want to true up a large platter bottom, wouldn't the bottom follow the angle of the tool rest? Assuming it wasn't perfectly flat before you started turning the bottom, wouldn't it remain lopsided if you didn't somehow place the tool rest at a right angle to the lathe bed? I do value your advice and realize that I'm probably exposing both my ignorance and dull wittedness, but I obviously haven't had much luck in truing bottoms or tops. Wife and I are going for Valentine Day's Dinner and Concert so I'll be happy to read your responses tomorrow morning.
Thanks, Hilel.

[Dario Octaviano]

Imagine the wood you are turning...it isn't round to begin with right? The turning/spinning wood is cut by your tool at a given distance from the center axis of the lathe's spindle...always creating a circle. The same applies to your bottom.

Best way is for you to try it and see what happens. Mount anything on your lathe and turn it on...make a cut. Change your tool rest position, make another cut close to the first...is there any difference? I bet you none.

The tool rest position is for your convenience and safety. The closer it is to the piece, the less you will have to extent the tool which translates to less leverage when the wood starts hitting it.

As to wobbly piece, if the bottom is not flat (say you have a bulge inside the foot, then yes it will be wobbly. Make sure that the outer ring of the foot is the lowest point (when placed standing).

[Paul Engle]

Hilel,
Dont try to parallel the foot to the tool rest, it will never come out flat and square to the turning. Instead make the tool parallel to the turning, hold the tool in one position and use your whole body to pull straight back. Dave Hout teaches to make the foot slightly concave , thus putting just the outer edge of the foot on the table surface( in case the thing shrinks a little the concave will absorb the shrinkage and stll not allow the foot to wable. I use the skew and hold it slightly point in toward the center and smooth till the whole foot is producing dust or small chips, i take a ruler acros the bottom to make sure the majority of the foot is not touching the ruler, just the outer edge. do not sand after ward as this may cause a dip or hump in the foot.

[George Tokarev]

As long as I'm in the advice seeking mode. How is it that the turners who make these videos or demonstrate at shows get perfectly squared bottoms or tops and mine are never, never, never squared. Most of my bowls are as cockeyed as I am. Please don't advise patience.... I just turned 68 (yesterday) and I can only change so much.
Thanks, Hilel.

Not sure what you mean by squared, but I'm going to assume, as have others, that you mean how do you cut the rim of the bowl. I like to roll out from smaller to larger diameter first. I find I get fewer "aw %#*&'s" that way from chip out when I find myself cutting uphill rather than down. Suppose that's the key, as always. Take a sweeping nip outward and down, back up, follow through in sweeps until you hit the center of your rim thickness, then do the opposite from there inward. I'm no good at all with a scraper, so if anyone can safely scrape the rim, God bless them.

Note that most bowls, even when dry will begin to oval a bit when still on the lathe. A bit is the release of stress from taking stock out of the inside, a bit is the bulge along the weaker short grain that comes with centripetal force. That's why getting an even thickness rim can be a problem as you get thinner. You can cut outside, inside, outside if you like, but it's risky business. A steady really helps against those Newtonian nightmares, as does concealing the inequality by rounding over.

Goes back to what my Pop told me long ago. "win if you can, lose if you must, but CHEAT!"

[Bill Boehme]

I will guess that you are talking about turning the bottom of the bowl.

From your description, I get the impression that your method is very mechanical right now -- in other words, I think that you are focusing too hard on the exact positions of the tool rest and the amount of overhang on the end of the tool. At the very least, I think that studying several different videos might help, but the best thing would be to hook up with another turner to give you a helping hand and critique your technique.

If my guess is in the ballpark, then I suggest that you forget about trying to measure the overhang with a micrometer and instead keep your eye on the bevel of the gouge as it cuts the wood. On bowl turning, a variation in overhang of an inch or so often is not that important. When you get down to the final smoothing cuts, keeping the overhang minimized is more important because it allows you to have more control.

Your description sounded to me like you were trying to turn the bottom while also trying to follow the tool rest and wound up with a bottom that was either rounded or cone shaped. Like I mentioned above, don't think about the rest except that you still need to be mindful of not sticking your fingers past it nor letting the overhang become unreasonable. Instead, concentrate on the shape that you want for the bottom. For a bowl, flat is normally not a good bottom. Define a bottom outer edge and then cut the area concave that is within the circle that defines the bottom.

Finally, I would suggest that you do not turn the bowls with a flat bottom and vertical sidewalls as that makes it look more like an ashtray or a cistern than a bowl. Try for a smooth curve throughout the entire bowl. For an excercise, see if you can turn one that looks like a hemisphere.

Bill

[Darrell Feltmate]

Patience has never been one of my very few virtues. I find myself alway finishing a bowl from a green blank. On smaller pieces the result isn't too bad, but occasionally, I'll want to improve or finish a piece and it will be so out of round as to render it virtually impossible to turn. This happened most recently with a piece of pawlonia (sp??) which I turned in a hurry. When I tried to re-turn it, I wound up making a platter out of a bowl-not the first time!! What do you folks do when a piece is out of round and needs work? I gouged this so badly that I had to spend nearly an hour with 36, then 50 sandpaper.
As long as I'm in the advice seeking mode. How is it that the turners who make these videos or demonstrate at shows get perfectly squared bottoms or tops and mine are never, never, never squared. Most of my bowls are as cockeyed as I am. Please don't advise patience.... I just turned 68 (yesterday) and I can only change so much.
Thanks, Hilel.
Hilel
Wood moves. This is a fact of life for all wood workers and turners in particular. I like to turn green wood bowls thick walled, let them dry and warp and then finish turn which minimizes movement. Notice I said minimizes not eliminate. The idea is to use wood so dry that no one notices the movement. I like to keep 75 to 100 blanks turned and dried so as to have a choice :) Actually, I just like to turn green and have a big stash. :oIf you finish turn green it will warp in almost every piece of wood and it will be too thin to go back and fix. Either you work with it or turn thick, wax the end grain, let dry three months or so and then finish turn.
As for squaring up a bowl bottom or platter, I assume you mean turning so it is in a flat plain, i.e. the platter surface is flat. One, use dry wood, green will warp out of square. Two, a tool rest is not a measuring surface although a few use it for one. The easiest method for a bowl bottom to be flat is to use a wide, square scraper at center. Move it a touch right and you see where you are concave or convex. Scrape to the left to square with the other side. Move left and right to bring the bottom into flat. I use a small piece of wood flattened on a belt sander to check for flatness and lightly scrape to fix where necessary. I am away next week on a course but will try to get some explanatory pictures up on my web site when I get back.
Darrell

[Hilel Salomon]

Thank you all for your kind advice. My next, and hopefully last on this thread, question is when you dry, how do you turn it without basically redoing it from scratch? Every time I've actually had the patience to let a piece dry, it would be so warped as to require major work with the gouge and other chisels. It would be almost like rounding out a piece which hadn't been cut at the bandsaw. I made a vase out of punky wood and after coating it with wood hardener and waiting for it to dry, found that it was next to impossible to turn. I wound up just sanding it, but it sure looks funny. Now I look funny as well, so it doesn't bother me too much, but I wonder how you folks make such beautiful and basically symmetrical bowls????

[Darrell Feltmate]

Thank you all for your kind advice. My next, and hopefully last on this thread, question is when you dry, how do you turn it without basically redoing it from scratch? Every time I've actually had the patience to let a piece dry, it would be so warped as to require major work with the gouge and other chisels. It would be almost like rounding out a piece which hadn't been cut at the bandsaw. I made a vase out of punky wood and after coating it with wood hardener and waiting for it to dry, found that it was next to impossible to turn. I wound up just sanding it, but it sure looks funny. Now I look funny as well, so it doesn't bother me too much, but I wonder how you folks make such beautiful and basically symmetrical bowls????

Hilel, you have it exactly right. :) Basically, we start from scratch, but this time with a dry piece of wood and the interior is gone and there is only an inch or so to reduce to 1/4" or less. Take a look at my site under turning a bowl from log to salad. I am not sure if I am permitted to post the link here, but it will take you from a log and a chain saw to the finished product.

[Gary Herrmann]

I turned my first piece of wet wood tonight. Small bowl, about 6" diameter. Stuck it in a bucket of DNA, I'll let it soak for a day or so, then let it dry for a couple weeks maybe. We'll see what happens then.

[George Tokarev]

Darrell has good pictures to follow. TDT, or Turn, Dry, Turn is the only way to get something which is round and or flat at a particular moisture content. As mentioned, wood will move as it loses, and as it gains moisture, and since the structure is not consistent, as with metal or plastic, it will pretty much follow the directions shown at http://www.fpl.fs.fed.us/documnts/fplgtr/fplgtr113/fplgtr113.htm , chapter three, figure 3-3 for various grain configurations, and the magnitute of movement will be close to the average shrinkage figures shown for various species in that same chapter. You can't avoid this, so instead you compensate for the inevitable. Best way I know is to make things curved.

Take the outside bottom. Your objective is to have something which sits steady without rocking, so you make your level pass with a shallow sweep of a well-supported tool from outside in. This assures you that the high point of the bottom will meet the surface all the way around its circumference, and that nothing inside will be higher, causing it to rock. How shallow or how deep you go is determined by the arc on your level cut.

I dish in platters, too, because a shallow dishing is easier to do than a perfectly flat surface, and can be almost indistinguishable from it. Keeps my sanding to a minimum, too, because I'm still cutting rather than scraping the wood, which minimizes tearout crossing harder latewood into soft early at right angles. Cheating? Perhaps, but a fair curve is easier to achieve and maintain through the last stage - sanding.

If you shear and dish a bit you can use a broad sanding reference to true over minor imperfections. Say you have a 1/16 difference from a mishandled gouge or a scraper pit to deal with. You don't have to take the whole surface down, just taper through it. Easier, and less likely to lead to the circumstance where you sand away the softer earlywood and leave the harder latewood elevated above the surface.

I use my sander as a scraper, supporting it on the rest as I did the cutting tools, and moving in sweeps to gain or maintain the fair curve, contacting the rotating wood rather than supporting the disk on it. Means much less difference between early and latewood removal, as it abrades against a fixed "tool" rather than a following one. Sand in sweeps, not reversals, or you'll get problems at bottom absolute center with an elevated spot or a depressed one. EDIT: This will also help the problem you mentioned in spalted wood, where the difference in hardness can be extremely dramatic, leading to an undulating surface.

If you want absolutely flat, get it close, then turn the lathe off and go to a cabinet scraper, treating it as you would other flat pieces. The scraper will bridge and remove wood pretty evenly.

[Hilel Salomon]

I already had one of his articles bookmarked but I had come across it accidentally. Using Google search, I found his website and what a FIND!!! It is truly a gold mine of information. So many of you are so generous in sharing your knowledge and talent that it is incredibly encouraging.but DARN!! Whenever I start to feel sorry for myself and begin lamenting the fact that my body is falling apart, I look around at so many people less fortunate. Well, at least there is cynicism available, but no..... here at this site, it's impossible not to see nobility and generosity.
THANK YOU ALL!!!