Turning on Saturday

[Rob Mathis]

I spent a couple of hours in the shop this afternoon taking advantage of the time alone. I sure wish I had a larger shop with heat. I was practicing rubbing the bevel. I was reading that this is the best way to use the gouge. I applied this to the Round Nosed smoother and the skew. The best results came from the Gouge and the Round Nose Smoother. Next time i will grab a solid piece of stock so that hair line checks do not show up as I am turning. But all and all I had a good afternoon.

[Wyatt Holm]

Looks good keep practicing.

[Steve Schlumpf]

Rob - been there, done that many, many times! It get easier with doing! If you get the chance - tag up with someone with some experience and have them show you a few things about turning. Will save you lots of time trying to figure things out for yourself!

Have fun with it!

[Bernie Weishapl]

Great looking practice piece. Just keep on going. Like Steve said if you have a club or someone close to give you some one on one that will save loads of time. If not I would get some DVD's and books to learn the proper techniques. I think I have around 20 video's and have watched each one at least twice and some 4 or 5 times.

[Rob Mathis]

I plan on hooking up after the holidays with the NOVA turners club.

But I had some free time today and wanted to do something besides work.

[Jim Kountz]

Rob when I turned something like that everyone here complemented me on my "Bonker"!! LOL So to keep the tradition going..............NICE BONKER you got there!!

[Jeff Nicol]

Rob, Just like when I am out in the boat and the fish are not biting......Any day fishing is better than a day at work! So the same applies to turning! I need to clone myself so I can turn 24/7!

Keep the tools sharp and even steady pressure with the tools. You will see that wood has a grain orientation and it will turn better one way better than the other.

Practice makes perfect! I am still working towards perfection, but hope to never achieve it. As then there would be nothing left to do!

Jeff

[Dean Thomas]

Your "round-nose smoother" is generally called a scraper. :rolleyes:

Are you sure that you're developing hair-line cracks? Looks like you've got a chunk of walnut there. Walnut's pretty porous; very open pores can sometimes look like small cracks, but usually are not.

Also use of a scraper on open grained wood like walnut can aggravate those same pores and make them look even more like cracks.

Scrapers can be used like you've used it here, but they are really best at working end grain and the sort of mixed grain that comes on the inside curves of bowl innards. Again, you certainly can use lots of tools in lots of different ways to achieve good surfaces, and different woods will react differently.

Don't be discouraged or intimidated. If you're like most of us, your first few pieces will be really outstanding firewood! :p No shame in that. It's all about practice and learning what those tools are really about.

And if you have not made yourself a gen-you-whine BONKER, you should. Mallets are really a necessary part of lathe work. Having a good bonker is a good thing and when you also have the thrill of making your own successful bonker, that becomes a great thing.

Welcome to the vortex.

[Rob Mathis]

This was a copy of a handle for a Stanley 750 chisel.

I made a bonker but it is only a couple of inches in diameter. I need thicker stock to turn up a good mallet with out doing a glue up.

And yes it is a round nose scraper ....... I was wrong on the name.

As for the crack, it is a crack as I noticed it in the end grain when I picked out the piece to practice on ............ maybe that was not a wise choice on my part.