A wonderful friend recently gifted my my first Thompson bowl gouge (5/8" V-shape). Wonderful tool, and I'm very impressed by it's ability to hold an edge. But I'm having a little trouble transitioning to it.
As background, I have in the past used a 5/8" Sorby gouge (a hand-me-down that was also quite nice, but was reaching it's end of life before I had a catch and broke the handle) and a Benjamin's Best 5/8" gouge that I bought as a short-term replacement until funds could support a higher-quality purchase (as a side note, I've been pretty impressed by the BB gouge -- though it doesn't hold an edge nearly as long as the Sorby and even more so the Thompson gouges).
I recreated the grind on my previous gouges on the Thompson gouge (as closely as I could anyway), but I'm having a bit of trouble finding my cut with it when doing push cuts (especially on the inside of bowls). I get a lot of vibration and my curly shavings start turning to dust (yes, this is with a freshly sharpened tool). I can switch back to the BB gouge and find my cut pretty quickly. I refuse to believe it's the quality of the tool itself, so it's either the grind or my presentation (or both). Looking at the flute on the BB gouge in comparison to the Thompson gouge, I think the flute on the Thompson is slightly more V-shaped, so that may have something to do with it, but not sure.
Any tips? I was thinking maybe I should grind the nose a little blunter (without changing the angle -- just take off a bit more material), but I hate to grind away steel needlessly if this is just a problem with presentation.