2nd Keeper - New Techniques, Pics

[Steve Mathews]

Here are a few pics of my 2nd keeper bowl. I tried a couple of things different this time, some successful one not so much. After watching a Lyle Jamieson video I tried push and pull cuts as he described them in an attempt to minimize tear out. I think some progress was made with the effort. I also tried a glue block with a face plate this time. It worked but seemed more trouble than it was worth. As for the bowl itself it's not much different than before but I did put a rim or lip on this one. I think the wood is mahogany but can't be sure. Enough of bowls for now, I'll probably continue with my lesson plans and more spindle work with the skew. I might also try to resurrect the Al Basham hollowing equipment that I have.

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[Bob Bouis]

Wood looks more like cherry to me.

I think I see some sanding scratches in the transition area in the inside. But otherwise, great!

[Steve Mathews]

Wood looks more like cherry to me.

I think I see some sanding scratches in the transition area in the inside. But otherwise, great!

Not only are there sanding scratches but torn fibers as well. I'm still learning to deal with both. I made some headway on the tear outs outside of the bowl but didn't have the same success on the inside. Sanding is still a mystery to me. I went through 80, 120, 180, 240 and 320 grits applying the same time and effort with each one. The hard part is knowing when to move onto the next grit because some of the scratches only show up after a few grits later. Maybe using water or oil to sand with will help. I also think the sanding pad used was a little too stiff, especially for the transition area on the inside. I used the one supplied by WoodTurners Wonders along with a close quarter drill.

[Bob Bouis]

Sanding is tricky, for sure. Generally my advice would be to make sure you use fresh sandpaper for each piece. After you think you're done with each grit, stop the lathe and look carefully at the piece, and sand (with the lathe off) out any remaining defects that you see. Then remove the sanding sheet from the drill and hand sand the bottom of the bowl and the transition area with the grain.

From the looks of it I'd say you probably needed to spend more time with the 120 grit paper. Moving up before all the scratches are gone never works.

As far as tearout goes, on the inside / transition area there's a couple things you can do. One is just to make the transition more gradual -- shallow bowls are easier to turn. Otherwise you might try shear scraping it, though it requires a bit of practice. Basically you use a freshly sharpened 1/2 or 5/8 round nose scraper tilted at a 45ish degree angle and VERY lightly pull it from the inside and, if necessary, push it from the outside. It takes a bit of practice but you can get very clean cuts that way. It's actually a lot like using a skew.

You might practice on your next bowl. Every cut before the last one can be a practice cut.

There are probably better videos out there but this is basically what I'm talking about: https://youtu.be/7oeiVQLeOd4?t=7m27s

[Steve Mathews]

Huh ... I actually used the exact same scrapers shown in the video but never thought of angling the tool to make it more of a slicing cut. That's a similar technique that Lyle Jamieson shows in one of his videos using a bowl gouge in a slicing scraper cut, which I tried on the outside of the bowl with some success. Thanks!!

[Bob Bouis]

It's a very useful technique either on the inside or the outside of a bowl. Sometimes it's the only way to get a tearout free cut. But there are drawbacks, mostly that it's hard to get perfectly smooth, flowing curves. You can either smooth them out with sandpaper or VERY light conventional scraping (there's a tradeoff as this will reduce the cut quality no matter how lightly you do it).

BTW like I said in the original post, I don't think you need a large or huge scraper to do it. I prefer 5/8" or so.

[Jeramie Johnson]

Agree on how tough sanding can be. I try to avoid it now, especially with those course grits. One tip, keep trying techniques so that you can start sanding with 220 (or up) instead. Sometimes, it just can not be avoided. In deeper bowls, I will approach the transition differently, depending on how the wood is behaving for me. One reason why as a beginner, I don't have a preference yet when working on transitions. Wood, dry/green, sharpness, tool presentation, tool pressure, etc., for me anyways, can vary how I deal with the imperfections. Gouge (U/V/fluteless), scraper, etc., I will use them all, sometimes a couple are used at parts of the transition. If you make the same shape over and over, I can easily see one would favor options, but I tend not to make the same shape twice. It's not by choice, but due to time and always varying the media I am working with.


Nice work on the bowl. Very clean underside.