by Jon Siegel
After more than four decades of
woodturning it is difficult for me to remember how I first learned. I do remember seventh grade shop classes and also my father showing me the little bit he knew. Mainly, learning was by trial and error. As years went by, I got better at it, partly because I was exposed to some good books such as the classic by Frank Pain, The Practical Woodturner, but it became clear to me that woodturning was an obscure specialty. Many of the tools I saw in old books were not available.
Today
woodturning is no longer obscure. The woodturning renaissance has had 30 years to mature – we have the American Association of Woodturners and hundreds of books and instructional videos. As a result, no one has to learn by trial and error in isolation as I did when I was a kid starting out in 1960. Nonetheless, in this article, I will attempt to help beginners not by giving simply a set of “tips”, but a list of items which fall into one or more of the following categories:
• Things I did incorrectly at first, and later had to “unlearn.”
• Things I should have learned sooner rather than later.
• Things I had to figure out on my own, because they were not in any books I had seen.
While I will jump around to many different topics, these represent some of the high points in my odyssey of discovery.
1 CUTTING VS SCRAPING – I wish my seventh grade shop teacher had said to me, “I’m teaching you the scraping method because you’re a beginner, but someday when you get serious about woodturning you’ll learn the cutting method.” If he had done so, I would have realized from the start that he was sending me down the wrong path.
Twenty years later, I found myself teaching shop, and I quickly discovered that you never learn something so well as when you must teach it. I developed this educational philosophy – don’t teach beginners the wrong way just because you think it might be easier for them to grasp. This does the students a great disservice and insults their intelligence. Show students the right way from the beginning, and be honest about the commitment required.
It’s easy to criticize my shop teacher now, but I don’t think he was purposely keeping anything from me. Rather I suspect he was not in possession of that information. In those days, industrial arts textbooks described mostly the use of scrapers. Gouges were used only for roughing out spindles. Many of these textbooks were written by authors whose expertise was mainly in metalwork and pattern making.
2 A LATHE IS NOT A VISE - I once translate in what I intellection was a esteemed storage that the wind should be situated between centers and the tailstock tightened as steely as affirmable! Yikes! Overweening unit from the tailstock causes a pack of problems - premature have on the headstock bearings, premature don on the tailstock halfway bearings, and most primal, motion of the workpiece. It took me a lasting second to substantiate that overweening make between centers was a solon contributor to workpiece Superfine Person - Kerosene wax, oversubscribed at marketplace stores for canning, makes an excellent stuff for your ride relief. Surmount apiece bar up into teeny pieces so you individual one within undemanding contact around your lathe. Use paraffin on the puppet quietus every digit or ten minutes. Use it on the lathe bed too. Everything testament go meliorate. Paraffin is such more favorable than paste wax from a can.
4 YOU DON'T Pauperization Galore CHISELS - I wasted a lot of period and money purchase chisels I didn't pauperism. As clip went on, I realized that there are only around fivesome chisels for arbor motion, and another quintet (concavity gouges and scrapers) for cross-grain transmute, that I rattling requirement. The chisels I no somebody use are mainly the oversized ones. Research to my article in the June, 2005 opening of The Old Saw for suggestions on the unexpendable chisels.
5 YOU WON'T GET FAR WITHOUT A Regular Put - Frankfurter Pain's assemblage introduced me to the skillfulness of using my forepaw to fixed the transmute and fall motility. As an sudden aid, I also learned that effort the affect with my fingers can recite me things active the attribute of the layer which my eyes incomparable could not find. But for a elongate experience, the plasticity of spindles was a limiting factor in my furniture designs. Patch I canvas use of the Intense TOOLS Positive Righteous TECHNIQUE EQUALS Fewer SANDING - In my previous life, I cerebration that it didn't concern more how you got the structure, because in the end you could soil the work into submission. The monition, which came gradually, is that inferior sanding is better for umteen reasons - sanding is drilling, sanding junk is horrific and sand toll money. But most central, the occupation looks amend with a peak of sanding because the surfaces are echt and the details are Deepen Discipline - Period ago, most lathes had manoeuvre pulleys with cardinal speeds - instant, faster and two more symmetric higher speeds which were so preposterously scurrying that no one ever victimised them. So essentially we had two-speed lathes and utilised the low motion for bowls and the indorsement modify for spindles. Today, lathes with locomotion pulleys jazz cinque or six speeds, but the problem has not denaturised. The smallest intensify is not low sufficiency and the drunk speeds are noneffervescent undignified. In statesman, all these lathes would be
8 FLAT GRIND – One day I discovered that chisels ground with a flat bevel work better than those that are hollow ground. I quickly re-ground all my cutting tools to the new flat grind, and I have never looked back. It’s hard to describe the feeling of that day. Without buying anything new or investing additional years of practice, I had suddenly made great progress in my ability, and I was seeing results that amazed me. If you attended the lecture by Michael Dunbar last September, you may remember he said the same thing about draw knives, scorps, etc. Any tool which is guided by riding the bevel should not be hollow ground.
9 THE JOY OF WOODTURNING IS DIRECTLY PROPORTIONAL TO THE MASS OF YOUR LATHE – This is not to say that I don’t like mini-lathes, I do. Any lathe that is built with all its parts in proportion with each other will function well on work pieces that are also in proportion to its size.
Back in the 70’s, I was fortunate to get a used Blount lathe (made in Milford, NH) which weighs about 500 pounds. My experience with that lathe resulted in a great leap forward. In particular I think having a well designed tool rest on a 300 pound cast iron bed made me realize how turning should feel. Now I have three lathes at 50, 500, and 5,000 pounds, and the Blount holds the middle ground.
Whether you are learning from books, magazines (like this one), videos, classes, or symposium demonstrations, be thankful that today there are so many resources and such a tremendous body of knowledge on woodturning to carry you on your own personal odyssey of discovery.
