Newbie needs help

[Donald Johnson]

My wonderful wife bought me a lathe for Christmas I am trying to learn how to use the skew chisel, I have practiced roughing out blanks with a skew with success, turning a tube for turning spindles, everything has been fine until I have tried to turn a bead with the short end of the skew--disaster! All I do is catch the tool and take a big hunk out of the blank, I have tried lowering the tool rest, raising the rest, closer, futher, changing the angle on how I hold the skew, changing the speed, nothing seems to work for me. What is the secret?

[John Shuk]

Practice and patience. A nice trick to use is to buy a "Dead cup center" and use it in the headstock to drive the piece. It works great but when you get a catch the piece will turn and you won't ruin it. I got my center from the Sears/Craftsman tool catalog for about 8 bucks. The link here is for a #1 Morse taper. I was able to find a #2 taper in the printed tool catalog. They can be tough to find anywhere else. Another suggestion is to get the video from Alan Lacer The Skew The Dark Side/The Sweet Side. He is the guy who told me to use the dead center and his skew seems to be his tool of choice.
http://www.sears.com/sr/javasr/produ...id=00925360000

[John Shuk]

Another thing to try to do is to make sure that the center point of the blade doesn't come into contact with the wood. You want to work below that center point. Good Luck. I am by no means a master of the Skew but whan it works well it is a thing of beuty. It is worth the effort to practice with it.

[John Shuk]

By the way. Welcome to the Creek! Enjoy the place you will learn alot here.

[Jim Becker]

Welcome to the Creek!

Now I have to say that I really admire you already for actually working with the skew right from the start...it's not an easy tool to learn, especially all by yourself. You might check out some of the Richard Raffan videos as he's a heavy user of the skew and also see if you have a local chapter of the American Association of Woodturners (AAW) to join, attend meetings/demos and find local mentors.

[Harry Pye]

Donald,

If you can turn a cylinder without problems, you should be able to roll a bead. Look at the way the skew meets the wood when you are turning the cylinder. The edge of the skew should always have that same relationship with the surface of the wood. So, when you roll the edge around, you also need to swivel the handle.

Alan Lacer has an excellant video on the skew. I got it recently and have learned a lot from it. Not an expert but am less afraid of the skew.

Harry