Master Bowl Turning Session 1: Getting Started

I can remember when I first learned to turn on the lathe and ironically enough, it was all by video. I watched a lot of videos. What those videos gave me was a great idea of how to handle the chisels, how to stand at the lathe, how to work with the material, how to mount the material onto the lathe. And you know what? That's my goal for this class is to take the decades of turning that I have accumulated and my love specifically for turning bowls and pass that along to you. Now, the thing I think really important is; watch the entire class, start to finish. Get a feel for the whole process. Then go back and start to grab onto individual components, sharpening is a great example, and work on mastering that skill. Get that going then go onto the next component and work on mastering that skill. And a little bit at a time with the help of this class, working on your skills you're gonna build up your technique. You're going to get more and more comfortable with this. And my number one goal for this class is to get you as enthusiastic about both turning as I am. It's very rewarding. We can turn bowl blanks around from blanks to finish products, really fast. It all revolves around you spending some time learning from the class, practicing the skills and getting going with them in your shop. So enjoy the class. I am ready to make some chips and we're gonna make a lot of them. Before we entertain the idea of getting any material on the lathe and starting any bowl turning, I wanna make sure that we've all got the same jargon at our fingertips cause you don't know the players, if you don't have a scorecard. So let's do this scorecard right now. We're gonna talk about parts of a lathe and I'm gonna give you some buying advice. We're gonna talk about tools that you need. We're also gonna talk about some accessories that are not must have but nice to have. So first off, let's walk through the lathe here. On the power end of this machine, no matter what kind of lathe you have, we've got what's called the headstock. This contains the motor and then also some capability of controlling the speed of the lathe. We're gonna talk about that some more in a little bit. At the opposite end from the headstock, this makes great sense, we've got the tailstock. Tailstock isn't used a lot for bowl turning, but we will see that we've got a couple of applications for that in what we're gonna do. The headstock and the tailstock are connected by what's called the bed of the lathe. The bed of the lathe could be steel raj, could be a cast iron bed like this. Variety of looks to that, variety of ways manufacturers pull that off, but either way it's the bed. Sitting on the bed, we have the banjo of the lathe. The banjo is in just a little bit. Can I receive our tool rest? And it's the banjo that we manipulate in order to make sure the tool rests and then the chisel are the right proximity to our work. Tool rest oddly enough, is the thing on which the tool rest. We've gotta have something to support the tool, while we're cutting. One of the things that's worth noting is that sometimes the tool rest that comes standard with a lathe may or may not be real useful for all your lathe work or specifically for the bowl work, we're about to talk about. In this case I love this big, long robust tool rest for when I'm working on longer spindles. When I'm doing bowl work, I prefer to have one that's a little bit shorter, a little bit easier to get into tight spots. So for your lathe you might wanna consider doing some sharpening for accessories like this. This is a shorter tool rest, makes it simpler to tuck the tool rest into a bowl, makes it a little simpler to follow curves on the outside of the bowl. The thing to look for there is that lathe by lathe these post sizes can be different. There are some standard sizes most manufacturers use but if you're gonna order a tool rest, you wanna make sure that the post on the tool rest is fitting the hole in the banjo, so these can play nice together. Another tool rest accessory you might wanna think about specifically for bowls is something that looks like this. Now you think about what kind of shape we're gonna have probably con- vex, I sometimes get that wrong on the outside of the bowl and concave on the inside of the bowl. We might wanna have a tool rest that's very capable of following that shape. So if we've got a curve out here we can bring this round tool rest in to follow the outside. And, or it's pretty damn handy for tucking that into the interior of a bowl to keep the tool nice and close to the work when we're shaping on the inside. We've got all of these listed on tools required on a PDF that accompanies the video. So check that list and consider shopping for that kind of stuff to add onto your lathe. Now let's go back to the tool rest or the tailstock and talk about that for a second. Common, with most lathes, you're gonna receive what's called a live center. Live center means that when this portion is mounted into the tailstock, this portion will spin with whatever you're turning. Centers are used a lot for spindle work. They're used a little bit for bowl work. And when we get to that part of the video, we'll talk about that. So good to know about, if for some reason your lathe came with what's called a dead center; which means this part does not spin. It's actually fixed to this shank then an upgrade to a live center would be a really good thing to consider. When you do that, what you need to know is the size of the taper. Check your owner's manual. This is a number two morse taper, that's very common size for most Wood lays. However, a smaller size, a number one taper might be on yours. If you've got a really, really big lathe, you might have a number three. That's not too common. Again, that number two taper is really, really, really prevalent. And the head end of the lathe, if we're doing spindle work, we're in all likelihood gonna drive that, gonna engage with it by using what's called a spur center. This would get driven into the end grain of a spindle, and as this spins then of course the spindle little turn with it. Not much use for this for our bowl work but good to know about them. More prevalent for our bowl work, will be this guy. This is called a faceplate, the face plate we'll thread onto the spindle of the machine. We can drive screws in through the back of it to fasten this to our bowl blank. We're gonna use this a lot. If you need to upgrade the faceplate on your lathe, the thing you need to know here is the size of your spindle. This'll be expressed in the diameter and the number of threads per inch. So there are some real common sizes out there, the manufacturers are all together on this stuff. Again, depending on the size and the make of your lathe, you might have a one inch eight. That means one inch diameter, eight threads per inch. In this case, it's a bigger layer inch and a quarter diameter. So you've got to know this in order to buy this or even cooler, in order to buy this. This is a scrolling jaw Chuck, a specialty Chuck, this will give us a lot of capabilities for bowl work. Now I'm not saying that to turn your first bowl you've got to run out and buy these. They're not inexpensive. But, when you see this get used later in the video you'll understand the capabilities that this helps bring to the turning work that we're doing and why I would feel compelled to buy one of these. Again what we need to know in order to get this, is what size we need here. Now, unlike faceplates, with specialty chucks, they're handled a little bit differently. Commonly the body of the Chuck has been drilled to accept an adapter. The adapter is then the right ID, the right inside diameter to go on your lathe. So anybody can buy this body, then lathe by lathe, you control what adapter you buy to go with it, to make sure it plays nice with your lathe. One of the things that's really cool about that approach is that if I get this for a one inch eight spindle today and in my future, wood turning I upgrade to a larger lathe with a larger spindle, I can take this adapter out, keep the body that's the expensive part and just buy a new adapter for another size spindle. Now for tools, let's talk about shearing, scraping all sorts of stuff. We're gonna start with the easiest technique for cutting bowls. And that's called a scraping technique which oddly enough is done with a bowl scraper. To be more specific with this tool, it's a half inch, that's the size here, round nose scraper. Looking at it in profile this way, it's really a very simple chisel. There's a bevel that goes back and away from the cutting tip. That's what provides the clearance so that those can cut. What changes as we go from scraper to scraper, a couple different things. One would be the size of it. So this is a one inch round nose scraper. Cutting action is the same. The other thing that could change is the look of the profile on the end. Maybe it's flat on the end. Maybe it's angled on the end. Maybe it's pointed on the end. All of those have different applications to allow you to get the tool into different spots on the bowl and have it do different things. Another thing worth looking at is another thing that might change on the scraper is the heftiness of the body of the steel. This one is quite a bit thicker than this one. The benefit I get to that; is stability in the chisel. When I'm making a cut with it, this tool is much less likely to chatter than this tool is, cause it's got more beef here. So in the world of buying advice, this is a great way to go because of that additional heft. Now nice to have but not imperative to have. This is a drill chuck, that'll go into our tailstock. You'll see this get used a little bit later. What's handy about this; is the Morse taper allows me to lock it into the tailstock, I can put a large drill bit in here and I can get a lot of the waste out of a bowl before I ever take a chisel to it. So it's a good thing to know about, good thing to put on your someday I want one of those lists. When we turn a bowl, it'd be really nice to get a bowl and not a funnel. So we don't wanna cut through the bottom of that thing. And these are really gonna help us a lot. These are called bowl calipers. Then what happens is that when I squeeze these onto the wall of a bowl, whatever I'm squeezing on that end; shows up on that end. So this allows me to gauge my wall thickness and make sure I don't take this further than I need to. If you're gonna do bowl work, I would say something like this is really a must have so that you can make sure you don't get it too thin. The other thing you gotta have as a way to protect yourself; one way to do that is with a face shield. Doing any kind of lathe the work, you really want to make sure it's a face shield not just safety glasses, especially with bowl work, especially if you get into doing any green wood, any log turning, we're going to talk about that later. Anything can come flying off of that machine. You really wanna make sure you're fully protected with a face shield. My preferred method for dealing with this issue is using this. With this I get a face shield and I get a respirator. So when I have this on, you'll be able to hear it. It's pumping fresh air down over my face. So I'm not breathing in the junk that's coming up off the lathe. We are gonna create a lot of chips and a lot of sawdust, we wanna make sure that's going on the floor, not in you. All right, buying advice; we talked about parts of lathe, let's talk about some stuff that's kind of nice to have on the lathe. One of those would be variable speed. So there are a variety of ways that we can control speed on a lathe. The real traditional way would be, we've got step pulleys on the top, step pulleys on the motor and by opening up the housing, loosening the belt, I can move it from pulley to pulley, to pulley to control the speed. And what you'll see is that we change speed a lot. When we're doing turning, there are different phases of it. Each of which we call, each of which calls for a different speed range. Once you see electronic variable speed and once you get a chance to use it it's pretty hard to not fall in love with it. Let me turn the machine on, There made about 1000 RPMs, about 1000 RPM. With a simple push of a button, I'm increasing the speed. Even cooler yet, there's a digital readout that tells me exactly what speed I'm going up to. What I like about this, is it's so easy to do, that you're probably actually gonna use it. So maybe you've got a drill press in your chuck, you change drill bit sizes. How often do you actually change the speed on your drill Press- drill press with the step pulleys for all those different sized drill bits. Same problem can happen here. To make sure you're safe, I really wanna make sure starting at that low speed on the first step, increase a little bit to shaping, increased a little bit to finishing with electronic variable speed. It's so easy to do. You're gonna do it. More importantly, if we end a project on high speed, I wanna make sure you bring it back to low speed when you're starting the next one, again with electronic variable speed. Very, very, very easy to do. The other thing that's cool about it is we can hit in between speeds. What happens with the step pulleys is that maybe on one step we're at 800 and on the next step we're at 1100 RPM. What if I wanna turn my bowl at 950? Well, I can. Here I can. So it's a great feature, not a must have, but really nice to have. Another thing that's pretty cool is that on some lathes we can increase their capacity. By capacity, what I mean is what's called the swing of the lathe. Swing of the lathe is usually expressed in diameter. And what it is; is the radius from the center of the spindle to the bed of the lathe times two. So on this lathe it might be 14 inches, I'm not 100% sure, until- I do this. When I turn the headstock outboard it significantly increases the size of spindle or the size of bowl that I can turn on this machine. Again, it's not a must have, but it's something that if you're really interested in bowl turning you might wanna consider getting or upgrading to in your bowl turning future. Now, last thing let's talk about lathe maintenance. One of the things I like to do to all my machines is make sure that they're lubricated, so everything is easy to use. In order to do this, we're gonna use a tool specific lubricant. Tool specific. It's real important that we don't do this with silicone or anything else that might eventually migrate into our work and prevent finish from sticking. So this stuff it's sourced on the PDF with the video. What we can do with this is give it a good shake, spray it on the bed of the lathe and I'm gonna move my banjo. And then I'm gonna do a little reverse spraying spray it on the bottom of the banjo. You can take your tailstock off, spray it on the bottom of the tail stock. What this does is it seals the cast iron. We'll talk about the benefit of that. It also then leaves behind a lubricant and we need to just buff that out a little bit when it's dry. The lubricant makes it so much easier to do this. We want this to be easy cause we are gonna adjust this banjo about 8 million times in the course of this video. So the easier that is to do, the better. The protection part has to do with the fact that sometimes maybe you're gonna turn green wet wood if that's got moisture in it, it's gonna flame that moisture off, it's gonna land on the cast iron, we don't want the cast iron to rust. This leaves behind a coating, that'll help prevent that. Now another maintenance thing is taking care of your tool rest. The dealio here is that let's do, I'm talking about lubricating to make stuff play nice together. Obviously had a little bit of a insertion issue there. That's better. All right. The tool rest is softer than your live chisels. So what happens over time is that if these bounce at all or even just from simply resting on here, we might get divots in the edge. And then when we're trying to make a nice smooth pass it hangs up just a little bit, in those divots. You can just see a jumping as it goes. That's no good, it affects my flow. Very easy fix, just gonna use a file and file that edge. Notice I'm doing this, not this, cause I wanna make sure that this stays in a nice straight line. I don't wanna take a chance of dishing it out. Won't take much. And a test really is to just get a chisel on there, angle it up a little bit so there's a corner down on the tool rest. Couple of strokes, huge difference. A lot of information there. A lot of it is on the PDF with the video, so you can go back and look at that. That helps you get tooled up making sure that you can do bowl turning and make sure that when I'm throwing these words out there you understand the jargon associated with working with a lathe, then turning bowls. One of the things I wanna steer you away from as you're getting ready to put a bowl on the lathe, is the idea that if a wood is soft it will therefore be easier to turn and therefore be a good practice wood. So a temptation might be I'm gonna get a big chunk of pine and throw it on the lathe. Here's the deal that I've found is that with those softer woods, a lot of them are what I would call an open grained wood. The bottom line is that the pores of the wood are just really, really really big. When we get that turning part of what you'll find good is that yes will your chisel cut it easily? It will. Part of what's hard to pull off is that it's hard to get a really good surface finish off the chisel because the wood is soft, because the wood is open grained, it tends to just tear instead of cut. As an end result, when we get to parts of the bowl where there are especially end grain, you can have big packs in here that are really ugly and really difficult to get out. We're just bottom line, take lots and lots and lots of sanding to remove that. One of the things I want to be able to do here is teach you to get the best possible surface finish, right off your chisel. Really want to minimize the sanding time. Part of that's gonna come down to a material selection. I'm not saying I've never turned to pine bowl. I have. I'm just saying don't get drawn into the idea that softwoods like pine are gonna be easier and therefore make a good practice wood. Good practice wood, I think is really stuff that's a close grained wood. This is a piece of maple. This is what we're gonna work on in this category of close grained woods. This list's on your PDF with the video. We wanna have a look at maple, walnut, cherry, Poplar, benefit to Poplar is that it's a wood that is a lot of people would consider it a secondary material for furniture projects. It's commonly available in thick stock. So we don't have to do any face-to-face gluing in order to get thick bowl blank side of it. It works very easily. Nowhere near as expensive as some of these other North American hardwoods. If you don't have access to thick stack, there's nothing wrong with taking pieces of one inch material, one inch maple and gluing them together face to face in order to make up about a two inch blank. That's about where we wanna be for our bowl blanks around two inches thick or so so that we have enough depth there to actually turn this into a bowl. We wanna stay away from woods that have any real bad defects in them. Those would be big knots that might come loose, cracks, anything that would cause the bowl to possibly come apart while you're working on it. Now that being said, as your bowl, turning advances you'll find for yourself, and maybe you've seen other people turn bowls that have what are called natural rims where the bark is still on. Maybe they have some cracks that have been filled and that becomes a highlight of the bowl. Maybe they have some knots in them that are very, very attractive. That's something that you can do as your skills get more advanced and you learn how to deal with that. But at this level, at the starter level, we really wanna make sure that the bowl blank is nice and sound so that we don't have some fear of that thing coming apart as we go. In addition, to the kind of conventional materials that I talked about, one of the things I've done a lot of is just grabbed chunks or logs and turn these into bowls. This is a piece of poplar that I literally picked up off the ground. And it's a little bit different. This is actually poplar, not Poplar. And it was just in somebody's firewood pile. I'm gonna show you how to work with chunks like this, turn these into bowl blanks that we can get on the lathe. The benefit is that because we're starting- mushrooms are in there, pretty cool. Because we're starting with a big chunk of wood, we can get thicker bowl blank side of this. This might provide those thick blades for you. If you can't find them at a conventional material supplier; lumber supplier. So bunch of different approaches here as we work with our different materials through the course of the video, we'll talk about some do's and don'ts there with the material. But big lesson out of this is; start out sticking with those close grained woods, they're gonna cut nicely and thick stock is good to give us the depth that we need in order to make that into a bowl.