I had to retire from being a trim and cabinet carpenter for health reasons but I didn't want to stop working with wood because I have so many left over pieces of oak, maple and other woods from staircases and custom cabinets.
I just bought a used Powermatic lathe and a bunch of tools from the son of an old man who died. I am getting it set up in my shed. I have some large windows that face north. Is it better to work with natural light or artificial? I have several light bulbs in the ceiling but overall this old shed is pretty dark except in front of the windows.
It came with a bunch of chucks in different sizes and boxes full of jaws, long ones, short ones, real wide ones with rubber stoppers on them for gripping bowls and platters he said. Right now I am just trying te get it organized and stored in some cabinets and drawers I have.
How do you store your tools? The man I bought them from had them sticking up in buckets sitting on the floor. He knew which one was which by what color was on the handle. He had different buckets for different kinds of tools. One bucket was scrapers, one was bowl gouges, one was spindle gouges and so on. I barely know which one is which and looking at the ground ends which are all different makes me wonder why he had so many different shapes on his bowl gouges. Lots of different sizes and lengths also. I have more than 90 tools to figure out. Some are easy, skew chisels, scrapers but all the different gouges make my head spin.
I bought his grinder on a platform with jigs on it to sharpen tools and I think I have figured it out. The sharpening is not a problem but trying to figure out why he has so many shapes on his gouges is.
He also had some tools which his son said were carbide tipped. Some are round and some are square. These tools have double grip handles. What is that for? To choke up like a bat? Why would you need to do that? They seem to tear up the wood pretty bad no matter what speed you run the lathe at. The gouges give me better cuts. So do the scrapers. The skew chisel seems to be easy to use just like a knife while whittling but I can't do much more than cut things round and smooth with it. Right now I am turning pine and oak 2x2 and 4X4 pieces left over from construction jobs. My shed is full of leftover wood like I said which is why I bought the lathe to use it up for toys and stuff. I don't have anything much bigger than 6X6s cut from the ends of newels. I have a barn full of oak and walnut and poplar in all kinds of widths and sizes. I turned a couple of oak bowls with bowl goughes and scrapers. Started out with the chuck screw in a hole and turned a recess for on of the chucks. They are okay but nothing like I see on here more like shallow saucers but my wife liked them.
I know I have a lot to learn and I am not afraid to ask stupid questions so be patient. I only know one thing for sure and that is I don't know it all.
I have lots to learn and I am going to meet a man who does turning who is going to give me lessons. I was hoping to learn a little before I met him. How about books? Any books that might help?
I really need a lot of help on this. I understand wood and tools but this is different than anything I have done. I have seen people turn spindles and newels and such and I am amazed.