Thread: x-cut problem

If you have eliminated all the things you say it may be you are not ready yet so try angle cut first and become ever so proficiant with normally cut timber and make haste slowly lest you lose interest. There are some timbers that would test the patience of a saint when cut at right angles.

Have success Peter.

Rick, with Xcut make sure tool remains sharp throughout, might need a couple of trips to the grinder to resharpen. Then, sometimes some wood has softer parts along its length and you could find more is takenn off at those parts. You could rotate the blank half a turn as you get towards the end, that helps a little. Good luck, and post some close ups if you continue having problems and all the drips under pressure will respond with good suggestions. Amos

With cross cut timbers when you tighten the lock nut you are compressing the grain on top of each other in cross cut orientation. Yes even on a tube there will be compression. The lock nut is only finger tight to just hold the blank from slipping. Also if the tail stock has been over tightened that will flex the mandrel to give you an oval or out of round pen. The lathe, tools and mandrel can be fine but if over tightening occurs, then oval a pen shall be. Peter has given good advice, have seen people try everything all at once with pen crafting and achieve nothing. Another thing you could do is drop the mandrel and use the no mandrel method, one half at a time ,that will eliminate any flex issues of over tightening. What Amos said re the tool being sharp and honing them after every few passes will keep the cutting effortless. With either straight or cross cut timber you are only cutting very lightly taking only 2 to 3mm max in depth. Good luck and hope your problem is solved soon. Darren

thanks for the help guys, will keep trying...