Rustic cherry bowl

[JPG]

Not a bowl expert, but AIUI bowl turning experiences end grain twice during each revolution.(A recipe for catching) A scraping chisel is more forgiving(ignoring possible tearout). A bowl gouge must be properly positioned to minimize catching. A gouge WILL bury itself during a catch.(just before it(or your arm) breaks or the bowl becomes a flying object.

Now you know why the model ten slip clutched drive sleeve was created.

[RFGuy]

Absolutely gorgeous bowl. I have a cherry crotch that I want to turn some day.

In the mean time, if this is not a hijack of the thread, maybe the turning experts could explain to me the problem with bowl gouges I keep hearing about. Not having done any real bowl work I don't understand why gouges would catch so often, unless it's just that any chisel would in hard woods like cherry.

Not an expert on woodturning, but I will give a newbie woodturning answer until some experts chime in. In my opinion the learning curve is much steeper with gouge chisels as compared to scraping, e.g. with carbide cutter scraping type lathe chisels. It takes more finesse in the body movements to operate a gouge chisel properly with constant attention. I can be a bit more lazy while operating my Easy Wood cutter tools while woodturning. Most of my woodturning experience is on the Easy Wood cutters, but I keep trying to get back to my gouges to gain more experience with them. Another way to look at it is cutting (scraping) with tools like the Easy Wood tools is more of a fine operation taking off smaller amounts at a time, whereas gouge chisels can be a more coarse operation. Even when one starts out trying to do fine operation using gouge chisels, it can quickly become a coarse operation with just a subtle shift of the wrist or arm movement (which may have been unintended). A catch can happen very quickly once this happens. Viewed another way, you almost always hold scraping tools (Easy Wood cutters as example) straight and even to the side of the turning, whereas a gouge chisel is cutting from underneath (due to flute of chisel) so the angle of attack is different. As soon as the angle of attack is too great, you cut in too much and wham a catch happens.

https://turnawoodbowl.com/no-catches-us ... even%20cut

bowl_gouge_catches.jpg (91.49 KiB) Viewed 7157 times

[BuckeyeDennis]

RFGuy, that page you linked is exactly where I learned what I was doing wrong with the bowl gouge. There's a video embedded in the article that clearly demonstrates the correct tool presentation. Suffice it to say that mine was not even close!

[edma194]

https://turnawoodbowl.com/no-catches-us ... even%20cut
bowl_gouge_catches.jpg

Lots of good info there, and following up on it I have finally realized that I wasn't clear on the distinction between different types of gouges, especially bowl gouges and how they are made from milled round stock and much stronger forged roughing gouges. The instructions on positioning a bowl gouge like BuckeyeDennis mentioned will be very useful too.