Hat turning - since i'm in the question asking mood...

And since you are all in the answering mood, haha. How many of you have tried turning wood hats? With what kind of success? I'm interested, but am concerned about turning so thin (vibration the big problem here?) and having the wood dry and crack in mid-project. Should a hat be turned all in one session? Can one lengthen the available working time by spraying water on the hat-in-progress? Is green wood the best or can one use a partially dry blank? How about laminating some boards together into a basic hat and turning that? Thanks for any info.

i have not tried a hat yet, but i have tried seethrough bowls and a square bowl(turned thin and then formed) vibration is a problem if you dont work around it. you have to make the farthest edges thin and work your way in. if you try to make the whole thing thin and then go back to touch up the rim you will get vibration and chatter. i have tried to keep peices wet by spraying with water i either ened up with mold or it dried out anyways and cracked, other people here have had different success with it.
you could try to use dry wood but you would have to soak it, i beleive you could soak it in DNA and i think that will penetrate the wholel peice quicker, but also dry quicker. trying to do a laminated hat turning i would think would be diffucult because of the glue, you wouldnt be able to soak and bend it very well, either the glue would dissolve, or it wouldnt want to bend and it would crack near the joint.

im no expert as i have not tried to make a hat, but i have tried other things which involve some of the things you have asked.

How many of you have tried turning wood hats? With what kind of success? I'm interested, but am concerned about turning so thin (vibration the big problem here?) and having the wood dry and crack in mid-project. Should a hat be turned all in one session? Can one lengthen the available working time by spraying water on the hat-in-progress? Is green wood the best or can one use a partially dry blank? How about laminating some boards together into a basic hat and turning that? Thanks for any info.

Mike, I've not turned one, but a couple guys in my turning club do, and it seems the wetter the better, for a few reasons; easier cuts, less vibration than dry wood, and its very easy to see through with a light behind to get a uniform thickness. I think the moisture content is also essential for bending the "brim" into a hat shape. It would be interesting to see a segmented hat, but I think you'd be limited in the shape of the final product.

I've turned three hats, one ball cap, two cowboys.

You must use green wood, the wetter, the better. Slinging water wet is just about right. A glue up of dry wood can not be shaped when the turning is finished.

The hats I've turned, were finished in one session. Any drying or changing of shape during a prolonged delay would make getting a uniform thinness unlikely.

I have sprayed water on the piece during turning to prevent drying to fast.

In a recent coversation with one of the better hat turners, he indicated that once the outside is shaped, he sands, and sprays with laquer before finishing the underside of the rim, and hollowing the hat. I've not tried that, but will on the next? one. The laquer slows the drying. The last cowboy took me about 2 1/2 hours to turn, at times using just about all the HP the 3520 had. The previously mentioned hat turner does one in less than an hour.

Turning thin has it's own set of rules. Practice on a larger sized bowl before tackling a hat. Use a light to gauge the thickness, and calipers wherever possible to double check. 1/8" is to thick, 3/32" or just a touch less is about right. An illuminated jam chuck is a real time saver when finishing the top of the crown.

Get the hat in the press as soon as finished turning, and keep taking up on the adjustment for ovalling the hat a little at a time every so often. Getting aggresive at this point will result in a cracked hat. Once the desired shape is attained, leave the hat in the press for a few days to finish drying. Don't be discouraged if you have several failures before having a sucess.

If the upload worked, a picture of the third hat from a maple crotch is attached.

Later,
Dale M

I have turned one. It wasn't as hard as I thought. I used green wood and did it in one session. I used a light right behind it to tell the thickness of the wood. Once the brim was down it kept the rest stiff enough to turn the inside.

Bob

I have turned four, this one was the best. As others have said, you must use wet wood, I have done mine in a single session. I try to work quickly and sometimes add water to keep the hat from drying while it is being turned. Vibration should not be an issue if you thin only a small section at a time and do not go back to that section later. The light is a good indicator of thickness but grain direction and wood color affects light transmission so verify the thickness with calipers often.

The first thing to do is purchase Johannes Michelsen's hat turning video and watch it a couple times, this will give you all the steps needed to turn a hat. Hats are not hard to do but take skills to turn thin which is learned. The basic idea is to form the outside of the hat then thin the wood to match the outside shape. Start with a fresh cut log and do all the turning at one time then bend it right off the lathe. If you start one now in 24 hours it's turned, bent, dry and ready to be sanded. I turned over a hundred hats and would loose about 20%... most of it was due to cracking when bent... a very narrow head is tough to fit... LoL

If you have any questions just give me a phone call.

Doug
440-241-6360

have tried one in maple with decent results ready to try another , watched the micachelson video helped a lot . they are a challege but very satisfying.

All hats above are really nice!! I guess I'll leave hat turning for the more experienced for the time being...

All nice hats in the above photos. I'm going to do a course with johannes when he gets back from NM. Any one interested?
DAve

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Should a hat be turned all in one session?

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That's the way I've always seen it done.

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Can one lengthen the available working time by spraying water on the hat-in-progress?

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Definitely.

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Is green wood the best or can one use a partially dry blank?

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Green wood is the best. Perhaps the only... In fact one demonstrator I saw, put the blank in a bucket of water right after he cut it, and transported it to the demonstration site that way.

Have fun! I've been thinking of trying it out too...