First Box from a Pen Turner

[Mark Norman]

Nice!

I also gave my first bowl to my mom. It will be cherished I am sure!

The pics look great and show off the piece nicely. Keep em comming!

[alex carey]

Looking pretty good, not really too much to say seeing how I have only made a few boxes myself. They can indeed by tricky too. Looks like you figured it all out though. Good job.

[David Walser]

I did have some tear out in those areas, and in spite of both sanding with the lathe spinning and by hand, I finally gave up. Any suggestions on how to deal with tear out would be appreciated.

It's much easier to deal with tear out with your cutting tools than it is with sandpaper. (You have to sand -- or cut -- the entire piece down to the depth of your turning to get rid of the tear out. Cutting the surface down another 1/64" or 1/32" is a lot easier than sanding away that much.) So, the first rule to learn is to avoid resorting to sandpaper until you've turned away the tear out.

How do you turn away the tear out? There are lots of things to try. In general, sharp tools and light cuts reduce or eliminate tear out. Other, "in general", approaches to try include lubricating the last cut or two with water or the finish you will be using. You can try stiffening the wood fibers with some CA glue (which risks staining the wood) or lacquer.

In this case, the inside wall of the box is fairly straight. I think I would have tried holding my skew flat on the tool rest and taken a very light pass or two with the point of the skew along the inside wall. This is using the skew as a negative rake scraper and the cut very seldom leaves any tear out behind.

On the lid of the box, the approach I would have tried would depend on whether this is an end grain box (the grain running parallel to the ways of the lathe) or a face grain box (the grain running perpendicular to the ways). If the top is essentially end grain, I think I would have tried taking another light cut with my spindle gouge going from the rim toward the center of the top. If that didn't work, I'd use a small round nosed scraper. If the top is face grain, I'd use my smallest bowl gouge (or a detail spindle gouge with the tool rest up as close as possible) -- with a push cut -- going from the center of the lid to the rim. If that didn't work, I'd use my bowl gouge as a scraper to remove the tear out. (If I didn't want to use the bowl gouge as a scraper, I'd use a small round nosed scraper. The only reason I'd use the bowl gouge instead of a "real" scraper is that I most likely already have the bowl gouge in my hand.)

HTH