Bowling balls turned

[Dale Dumond]

Watched some videos on turning bowling balls. Looked like fun so i gave it a try. First attempt was a old black ball that was marked ebonite and someone had engraved house ball on it. Turning was fun and the shavings looked like fettuccine coming off the carbide cutter.
so I thought i would try one of those nice bright colored balls. I picked up a blue "Rhino" ball at a thrift store. Prepared and mounted the same way i had done the ebonite ball.
Slowly ramped it up to 900rpm. No vibration and looked good to go.
Within seconds of the carbide contacting the ball everything went south pretty quickly. Instead of fettuccine like shavings the chips came off like shrapnel and I only continued for a minute or so to see if i would work through it. No luck.
Obviously something was different. I'm thinking material ball was made from.

Thoughts

[Mikey Green]

I never would've thought of that. Did you turn the black one into a bowl? Looks like it from what I'm seeing. Nice job!!

[Chris A Lawrence]

The rhino is a urethane shell not plastic like the cheap balls. I am surprised it spun without vibrations the rhino has an off centered weight in it to make side rotation to hook the ball down the lane. Look for kids balls they are colorful and made of cheap plastics.

[Dale Dumond]

Thanks.....what is a kid's ball? The black ball was smaller and weighed 10 pounds.

[Chris A Lawrence]

that would be a kids ball. Anything 10 pounds or less. Bowling balls made for kids typically do not have out of balance cores in them and are made of less expensive resins instead of fancy materials that are made to get traction on the lanes. Keep a look out at yard sales and fleamarkets a lot of them are made out of different color resins that are swirled together.

[Mike Goetzke]

Dale - I was trying to turn some Delrin rod and had nasty chatter with my carbide tool. I searched a bit and found many suggested using negative rake cutter. Bought one and it cut a shinny smooth surface!

[John K Jordan]

Dale - I was trying to turn some Delrin rod and had nasty chatter with my carbide tool. I searched a bit and found many suggested using negative rake cutter. Bought one and it cut a shinny smooth surface!

I've had good results with an NRS in various plastics too, but what I almost always use is either a Hunter carbide tool used as a gouge (not a scraper) or a spindle or bowl gouge.

My question was what kind of carbide tool was Dale using? A flat-topped cutter can be the wrong tool for some materials.