An a-HA! Moment

[brian zawatsky]

So a few weeks ago I made this bowl, which was intended as a wedding gift for a friend of ours. This was the subject of another thread about turning KD maple, in case anyone is keeping score lol.

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So I made a few big mistakes with this one. For starters, I screwed up when hollowing the inside and cut the sides too steep, ending up with a wide flat bottom. I think the wide rim threw me off. So I'm hollowing away, next thing you know I see light coming through the wood on the bottom of the bowl. I nearly parted off the top half!

My solution for that was to turn a shallow groove and fill it with inlace to hide the boo boo. The inlace on the rim was part of the plan from the get go. This seemed to work until I was sanding the outside and saw a little blue streak showing through. Rats.

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Anyway, the reason I had so much sanding in the first place is that I had grain tear out to get rid of. End grain tear out has been the bane of my bowl turning journey since its inception. Then today, while turning a replacement for the above boo boo, I had a flash of clarity. Instead of rushing through roughing the shape of the bowl, I thought I'd take some advice and spend some time making practice finishing cuts as I went. Finally got the hang of a super light, tear out free push cut on the outside of the bowl!!!! I was ecstatic lol!

By the time I finished I was covered in whispy little streamers of sugar maple.There are still some light tool marks to contend with, but I'm hoping some work with a NRS will get rid of them. In the last pic you can see the torn grain from the roughing cut, and the nice smooth finish cut below it. I know this is no big deal to most of you guys, since a lot of you are pretty accomplished turners, but it was huge in my basement shop!! Haha

Now on to learning how to get that same no-tear out cut on the inside of the bowl too.

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[Allan Ferguson]

You have taken a great step forward. Green turning you can hog out great big curls. The hard and dry takes sharp and fine cuts.

[Roger Chandler]

To use a phrase from that TV program from a few years back "Kung Fu" ..........."you have taken step forward, grasshopper!" Those "aha moments" are milestones in our success........nice discovery, Brian!

[John K Jordan]

Dang, there you go, letting the secret out to woodturners everywhere!!

But great job!

As for the inside of a bowl, I've become a fan of a bowl gouge grind I learned from Chris Ramsey (cowboy hat guy) who did a gig at our Knoxville club. He grinds freehand and grinds almost all the bevel away to a round shape so it doesn't get in the way on inside cuts. When I saw his cuts and the grind it was a bit of an "ah ha" for me!

All I have is this very poor cell phone picture of his gouge (3/8" or 1/2", can't remember):

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If you look carefully, you can see his "cutting bevel" at the edge is only about 1/16" wide. He adds this cutting edge only after rounding away the bevel. This leaves the edge ground at an angle that for inside many bowls you can make a continuous cut from the rim to the center. A "whispy" cut, of course! :-) Or what Chris called a "whisper" cut.

BTW, Chris is turning wet wood, but this grind works well for dry. (I almost always turn dry wood.)

It took me some practice and I'm still not very good at it. I've been sharpening for so long with Tormek jigs that freehand sharpening is a brand new thing to me. Chris has sharpened this way so many times he can resharpen before he finishes a sentence. (BTW, he is an entertaining guy!)

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JKJ

[robert baccus]

That is a good feeling--aha. Down south we call that cutting frog hair. Don't sweat the texture that cutting leaves behind as it dis appears with just a touch of sandpaper. That cool bevel is actually a variation of the old bottom feeder in practice.