The first thing you want to do is "seal" the end grain since moisture is … This also happens to the wood fiber ends. Thank you, Kevin! RSS Feed However a couple of weeks ago I splurged and replaced my “Lada” with a “BMW” and got started with a bowl turning hobby. Starting with the new lathe I used the same higher speeds. 4"diam. Tear out happens when the grain wants to split, chip, or fracture, due to the wood itself, vibration from the tool, vibration from the balance of the wood, vibration from the lathe or its foundation, or vibration from how far the wood projects from one or two centers. When I first started turning, I was lucky you might say. Hi Kent, Okay, let’s start with the basics. If your angle on your gouge is at its optimum, your tool handle is long, your tool rest is about 1/4" away from the wood, and you use a shearing cut at the correct angle and height above the tool rest, you won't create tear out any bigger than the cut you are making. Instead, find the trouble area, usually along the end grain, and sand with the grain to remove any tell-tale marks. How can I tell if the wood turning chisels are sharp? I was getting quite intimidated by this much more powerful machine. Speed up the lathe if necessary, slow down the tool feed. Do not sand with the lathe on as this will only increase any tool mark hills and valleys. Ready for your wood bowl adventure? When we turn a side-grain wood bowl, we are basically turning a bundle of linear wood fibers, kind of like a block of straws. Experiment with subtly different angles. Want to learn all about finishing cuts? Your rip a standard 2 x 4 into two turning blanks. Wood Turning tool Carbide Tipped Working Lathe Tools; ... * The straight edge of the cutting edge carries out the chip severing. I use carbide tools and try shearing at an angle. great advice,will save me a lot of time and frustration. In general, I never turn faster than 1,000 r.p.m. Facebook Group Im just finishing a turning project which just terrorized me with end grain tear out. Wetting the wood surface can raise fibers and allow the sharp bowl gouge to make a clean pass. The blade drops down at an angle and makes a clean cut. First, don't push the tool too fast. And if all else fails, try turning a more forgiving wood. The logs were stacked in a dry place and sat to wait for their fate. Sometimes, even with the sharpest tools and the best techniques, you can get torn grain while turning. The first thought might be, “perhaps a little sanding can fix the problem?” Not quite, these pits are more than they appear. How can I avoid grain tear out on a wood bowl and get a good smooth final surface? If it's still a problem you will have to resort to abrasives. Set of 4. I wasn’t great at it but it satisfied my purposes at the time. (Furniture Making Forum) The fibres are not cut, but torn apart. Generally, tearout happens when routing across the grain, turning corners or removing too much material in one pass. I have learned how to sharpen the gouge so I don’t think that is the issue. Turn A Wood Bowl is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to amazon.com. I mix my own shellac using shellac flakes and denatured alcohol. Aged, dead, and rotting, the wood still had to be good for something, I thought. Click here to Get Started. Wood Turning 7 Tips STOP end grain tear out wood bowl woodturningYear out can be a huge issue and create all kinds of frustration. Looking back, I’m so glad it worked out that I acquired that beautiful, yet challenging to turn wood first before turning an easier wood. I bought what I think is a very good bowl gouge but at this time progress is slow. It is long and heavy so that you can handle the torque generated by taking bites out of the wood after you have been turning air. Posted – 8-4-2011. Shear scraping can cleanly cut the wood bowl end grain while eliminating grain tear out. Tear-out beware, Roger is ready for you now!!! Watch out as … Imagine the end grain fibers like little hairs. Tearing usually occurs either where the surface is changing from end grain to side grain as the wood rotates, or where locally disturbed grain opposes the cut. Thanks, Dan! Sand any trouble areas still remaining with focused attention. The fragility of wood often manifests itself in the form of chips, splinters and tearout along a cut edge. Want to learn all about finishing cuts? Think about drawing a sharp knife across a sheet of paper. It wasn’t until my pecan stash was almost depleted that I turned a different type of timber. Here are a few suggestions: – Read this article about bowl gouge techniques. Spray a sealer like laquer on the wood to give it a little more support. really appreciate your tips. At this point, if no other tips are working, try applying a layer of shellac to the whole bowl or just the trouble areas. If the blade is pulled slow and steady, it will make a smooth cut. The … Check it out. A sharp bowl gouge might seem obvious, but it is the single most significant factor in reducing grain tear out. Be deliberate and make more controlled less deep cuts. I can’t tell you why for sure, but it just works better. I learned so much more than I would have imagined from those persnickety pecan fibers. Spindle gouge. I could really use some help with this problem. You can tell which direction to scrape or plane with the grain by examining the tear out. The turning methods you mentioned are spot on especially the comment about the traditional gouge grind and riding the bevel. On the end grain areas, the wedging action pulls on the fibres and if they are weak they can break below the surface and pull out. Yorkshire, UK. Catches, where the chisel grabs the wood and tries to plunge into it deeply are a fact of life in turning but more so early in the learning process. The end-grains have been broken, snapped off and jostled around. Let me know if that also helps reduce the tear out. Second. My new lathe has 3 variable speed ranges. Hi! The idea of milling it into boards vanished when it became apparent we had no way to haul the massive sections out of the tiny fenced backyard. Slower, shallower cuts will reduce the splintering. Doesn't acrylic or Polycril change the appearance? Acacia wood & resin. 2 things come to mind to try. Until all of the grain tear out area is removed with precise cuts, the tear out will remain, and sanding will do very little to remedy the problem. If you force the tool through the wood it will tear out even with a sharp tool. Cyanoacrylate glue will definitely hold fibers still to cut cleanly in tricky applications. This was about the time I decided to join the local turning group. I do eventually hope to join a wood turners club in the area at some point but because of the current situation all these activities are suspended. What I was especially excited to read was the wood treatment for punky wood. I’m now working exclusively between 250 to 800 rpm. video as I describe how I like to remove the bowl interior. Supported wood grain. Grain tear out can be discouraging, but with persistence and patience grain tear out can be a thing of the past. Incorporating the gentle approach of a steep cutting angle as described above, this bowl gouge finishing technique can produce results that rival beautifully sanded finishes. Return a sharp edge to your bowl gouge as frequently as possible. I actually bent(twice) my gouge that I bought years ago to accompany my original machine. I learned to use a variety of techniques to tackle trouble areas. A more gentle and cleaner cut is made, rather than the scraper meeting the bowl surface at a flat 90-degree angle. Turning up the lathe speed makes it more difficult for the tool to repeat bad behaviors and instead it will start to create new clean cuts. Also, try turning a bit faster, but not too fast and slow down the pace of your cut. It was only natural that a friend of a friend’s Facebook plea for help with a fallen limb came to my attention. I have an article all about how I sand my wood bowls. That said, end grain feels different than long grain, so you're always going to have some difference. Having watched a few experts making the entire process look effortless. Even when I cut with a sharp fingernail gouge, I get tear-out. Learn how to repair tear out with a scraper from a woodturning expert … Another great option is to use a round nose scraper and “cut” instead of scrap the surface. To repair it would be to level the surrounding areas with sanding or scraping or hand planing or a combination. From contributor J: Why had I been turning that rough punky pecan all this time? Boy am I glad I saw you’re video on lathe speed. Wood bowl grain tear out can be frustrating. You might think that 300 to 500 r.p.m. Cutting “with the grain” is a confusing statement, as I detail in the article about making supported grain cuts. Whenever I am dealing with a tear out prone wood, that’s exactly what I do. If those hair get hit with a dull bowl gouge edge, they will fall over and bend. thank you. Ill try to explain the problem, but without going into a lot about the particular turning. I’m not totally new to the wood lathe and owned a very basic machine for many years but I used it mostly to turn a few spindles from time to time. A process discovered by Hawaiian woodturner Ron Kent often allows better turning of bowls from green wood. So we bucked the limb down to manageable chunks and loaded it on my trailer. Thank you for your comments regarding end-grain fun.. I also use 5-minute epoxy to glue my blanks to blocks in order to chuck them up. Specifically, soaking rough turned bowls in a simple solution of one-sixth concentrated dishwashing detergent greatly aids in turning, reducing tear out from the tools and greatly reducing checking in the final drying. However, with that being said, a more traditional standard grind offers better results when confronting problematic end-grain. End grain drives me crazy. Perhaps it’s the steeper bevel angle or more bevel surface. When I worked with the problematic punky pecan I mentioned above, I’d often run into areas that were soft and spongy. Nov 29, 2020 - Explore Larryfetterman's board "Wood lathe", followed by 375 people on Pinterest. Tip #1: Dial it back and slow down article specifically about the angles of the bowl gouge bevel. Tear out can happen in the bottom of a bowl or box when using a scraper. Plane from the broken end to the pointed end. OK maybe 3 things or maybe 4. Putting over these ideas and techniques is an art, too – congratulations! Tear out is an indication of 1 of 3 things. I noticed in the video yesterday that when you started to dig out the inside of the bowl you just confidently presented the tool and off you went. If you're getting actual tear out, more speed (and very sharp tools) will help. In with both feet and my confidence was dashed almost right away. Although CA can be used on the whole bowl surface, I find shellac is better for that purpose. For details about sharpening a wood bowl gouge, see my bowl gouge sharpening article for more information. … Oh. First off, as described above, the tear out should only appear on one-half of the total end-grain area. These tube or fiber ends are known as end-grain. On the other hand, if you really want to learn (or torture yourself) find some old ratty and punky pecan (or similar wood) to turn. Hey Kent, I bought a larger lathe to be able to turn larger than the 5 inch bowls and cups I have turned. Epoxies have their place for larger voids. Is there another, almost identical marked up area on the opposite side? article about making supported grain cuts. I’ve seen these be as much as one-eighth to one-quarter of an inch deep in some cases. Read this article next. I greatly appreciate your kind words! When cutting with either a bowl gouge or negative rake scraper, angle the tool cutting edge to reduce force. Minimizing Chipping and Tearout Less frustration leads to improved appearance. But honestly, the incremental passes is probably your best bet. With each rotation of the lathe, the end-grain or ends of these “straws” will pass by twice, once for each end of the tubes. Log after log produced bowl after bowl. Hey! Instead, we need to shave the wood fibers, much like using a razor. Tear out happens when the grain wants to split, chip, or fracture, due to the wood itself, vibration from the tool, vibration from the balance of the wood, vibration from the lathe or its foundation, or vibration from how far the wood projects from one or two centers. Read this article next. Get Organized – Number outside corners, add arrows pointing towards the inside corners and a “T” marking the top end of the ornament. To get a smooth finish all the way around you'll need to fill the pores with a grain filler. When grain tear out occurs, at first glance, it may appear to be only a few small pock marks in the wood bowl surface. No matter what I did to try to achieve clean cuts, there always seemed to be areas that tore and ripped out. The branch fell in the night and barely missed the edge of their home. Will use the tips. 875 to start and up to 1200 to shape etc. My Wood Bowls — Etsy Shop Shear scraping is a bowl gouge technique that feels foreign and odd at first but is incredibly valuable for creating a smooth finish. Here is the link to all the details about cutting with a round nose scraper. Try cutting in the opposite direction. What I didn’t know, because I hadn’t turned any other type of wood, was that pecan is notoriously punky and problematic for producing grain tear out. tear-out that leaves a rough feel on two sides . All the best to you! When the cuts are made, instead of falling over or breaking off, the wood fibers stand tall and are cut clean. The fingernail grind is the bowl gouge grind I prefer for most of my turning purposes. Sanding by combining lathe rotation and detailed with-the-grain sanding (lathe off) is the ideal way to achieve a smooth final finish on your wood bowls. The more accurately aligned the centers are, the less vibration also. Wood immediately begins losing water/moisture from the moment you remove it from the living tree, and as it does, it shrinks. Keep up the good work, you have a very pleasant style of presentation….Best I turned some pine and some spruce and was seeing the tear out. Here is an article specifically about the angles of the bowl gouge bevel, it’s an important read. Artwork and Content Usage, YouTube Channel Bowl Turning Info Shop, 14 Ways To Avoid Grain Tear Out With Wood Bowl. Go back down to my second post in this thread. If the same knife is rapidly pulled through the paper, tears will most likely form. * This is an aggressive tool that cuts but processes with control. My. If tear-out is still occurring, then it may be a case where only abrasives will remove stock without causing tearout. By angling the tool edge, the sheer force of the metal to the wood is reduced, and a cleaner cut occurs. * It cuts a thicker chip. Now, the real test. 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