Dealing with tear out.

[Josh Bowman]

Generally I've been able to avoid tear out by going easy with sharp tools and shear cutting. But either I didn't follow the above or this Cherry is just soft on the sides.
Having said that, what would be the best advice to deal with it? Can it be filled with perhaps epoxy and some other material to celebrate the mistake or should I keep whittling away at the thickness until I either make the tear out or the bowl go away?

[David E Keller]

I don't think there's a good way to 'celebrate' the surface as is. You could give a go with a wire wheel and texture the entire thing. If you want smooth walls, you could try applying shellac, oil, or even water to make the cut a little easier... Newly sharpened tool and light cuts with the grain.

[Steve Schlumpf]

Josh - I would keep working on it. Looking at the surface - have you tried cutting while moving in the opposite direction? Like Dave mentioned - you have to go with the grain and the photos look like what you would expect when cutting against the grain.

Let us know what method works for you in this case!

[Jim King]

I would smooth it out with a fine tooth rasp and sandpaper.

[Marc Himes]

If the wood is punky, you could try the Elmer's Glue and water trick. (50-50 glue and water generously applied or soaked, dry for a day and try again to turn it.)

Marc Himes

[Dale Miner]

To me, the pictures show what I call 'lift out' or 'split out', not the typical end grain tear out. This is caused by the edge of the cutting tool getting under the wood fibers, and splitting a short section of the wood off, not catching the fiber and tearing it out.

The best way to advoid what the pictures show is to use a push cut from center out with the gouge handle horizontal. With the bowl mounted the way you have it, it might be tough to use a push cut on the bottom half and not hit the headstock with the tool handle. Reverse mounting the piece on a friction chuck might have a better chance at making a push cut, but the tailstock might end up in the way. Making a push cut from the smaller diamter to the larger diameter looks doable for the upper part of the bowl. Sometimes a gouge ground for doing the inside of bowl bottoms (i.e. conventional grind, more blunt bevel) can be used for doing a push cut on the outside of the bowl without having the handle hit the tailstock.

Next best way is to use a freshly sharpened fingernail ground bowl gouge, with the handle nearly straight up and down, bevel rubbing, cutting with the wing of the gouge, using as much shear as possible, several light cuts from smaller diamter to larger diameter. The edge that is doing the cutting should be almost straight up and down, slicing the wood off. This cut can be tough to pull off without having catches and dig ins.

Third best, use a push cut from large diameter to small diameter. A push cut with bevel rubbing holds the wood fibers down, and does not let the cutting edge act like a splitting wedge. The down side to a push cut the wrong direction is that end grain tear out will likely be significant.

Fourth best, with a fingernail grind, use a pull shear scrape from smaller diameter to larger diameter cutting with the lower wing with the flute of the gouge closed as much as possible without the top wing making contact with the bowl. The cutting edge will become dull rapidly with this use, and needs to be sharpend as often as every 30 seconds of cutting time. Several light shear scrapes should eventually get rid of the lift out without creating any new.

A combination of #3 followed by #4 will usually get the surface sandable if #1 or #2 can't be used.

[Reed Gray]

What tool are you using? The turning is flat grain, pretty standard for bowls. The wood appears to be ash or oak, which when dry will tend to tear out more than other woods. Having your cutting edge at a high shear angle, as opposed to a scraper flat on the tool rest (bad choice of tool for this type of finish cut) will cut with much less tear out. I prefer to use a scraper with a fresh burr, at a 45 or higher degree angle on the tool rest, and take very light passes, getting spider web like shavings. If you get the wood wet (I use water, but others use oil finish), let is sit for a minute or two, then again, take several very light passes to remove the wet wood. This can be done with the wing of a gouge, usually without the bevel rubbing, and the handle dropped way low (high shear angle). Roll the flutes over so that both are pointing towards the wood, one slightly more than the other.

robo hippy

[Josh Bowman]

Reed, it's actually Cherry. The lighting was made so as to really show the tear out. The inside of the bowl is a nice red. I had been using a bowl gouge with long wings, kind of an ellsworth grind. As I usually do I flip the gouge on it's side and scrape the shape, then resharpen and drop the handle to shear the sides, however the scraping was really hard on those two sides and tore chunks out. One divit is fairly deep and will take away from me having the thickness I want to shape the inside, but maybe not, havn't measured that close yet. The wood in that are is not punky, but it is kind of soft, the other two sides have the pith going through it.....not the best option, but CA glue looks like it won the day, but being very new to turning 6 months ago when I roughed this out, I didn't know better.
I have seen some really nice fillers used on cracks and such and wondered if someone had done this with large tear out. But I guess not. I'm going to reapproch it with the above suggestions, if it's getting too thin, I my pierce that area and fill it with epoxy/brass or something.

[Leo Van Der Loo]

Josh I have run into this problem a few times, Cherry and Black Walnut seem to do this more often than other wood, more so when still green than roughed and dried bowls, but they will do this also but less so.

I got a couple pictures I took at one time to understand what was happening, this was on a dry Cherry bowl that had been rough turned a few years before, you can see the small tear out, I prefer to call it lift-out,as that is as it is not really tearing the wood, but lifting little chunks out, like slivers, the second picture shows that on the edge of the cutting where these slivers stand up.

The last picture shows the final surface after cutting with a small conventional ground bowl gouge a couple of times taking very shallow cuts and holding the gouge almost horizontal.

Grain lift-out.jpg

The edge shows what happened.jpg

small traditonal bowl gouge cut.jpg