Norm on a Lathe

Did anyone else see Norm's Lathe episode?

I watched the New Yankee Workshop on Saturday (PBS) and Norm dedicated the whole show to the lathe.

He started out with a green piece of firewood and made a cylinder. It was painful to watch. Norm made it look hard. Maybe if I had not seen Richard Raffan's "Turning Wood" DVD, where he makes it look so easy...

In any case, he went on to turn a bat and a table leg (using a skew to finish;) ).

In any case, Norm usually makes everything look so easy, but he did not look comfortable on the lathe.

Nathan

Yeah, Lathe 101 by Norm is totally furniture oriented. I'd like to see him do or bring in a turner to do bowls and hollow forms. Segmented turning should also be right up his alley.

If you've seen the candle stand table project, he uses the lathe there also to flatten the top of the table and give it a raised lip so to speak. That was pretty cool, since I hadn't thought of using a lathe that way.

Norm already did an episode where he made bowls on the lathe.

Bill is correct, Norm even visited a pro-bowl maker in the San Juan Islands who showed how he does it (a low speed custom lathe and a rotary grinder).

A couple weeks ago I caught a tail-end of some women's home improvement show on HGTV. She was making the pole for a table lamp. First she roughed the stock with a roughing gouge, but stopped with just the corners knocked off. She switched to either a detail gouge or bowl gouge (couldn't tell which), stating that it would give a better finish. Then she started driving the gouge down the wood (and I mean driving ), so fast that there were ridges down the length of the shaft. She then stopped and got the sand paper out.

It was truly painful to watch

Sounds like Norm is improving his skills. Saw him once making spindles for a windsor chair, starting with a 1 inch dowel, and taking a rasp to it.
robo hippy

I don't think segmented turning is for him, I can just see him going"and to hold those little pieces in place, we just use some brads" . All I see is lots of tiny bits of brads flying around the shop:D

No brads allowed in segmenting:D I would like to see something from Ol' Norm in the segmenting world of turning.;)