Thread: new lathe

You will probably need a chuck for bowl work.
I use a supernova with a woodworm screw to mount bowl blanks ti turn the "underside and base of the bowl, then flip the blank over and grab the base you just formed with the chuck's jaws to hollow out the inside. Seems to be the easiest way for a basic bowl at least.

Welcome to the woodchuckers fraternity!

You can screw your blank directly to the faceplate, provided you keep in mind that you're either going to end up with a thick base (thick enough that you don't find the ends of the screws when hollowing) or that you're going to lose that piece of wood plus the thickness it takes you to part off. eg. If the blank's 10cm long, your screws penetrate 1cm and it takes you 2cm to part off safely your bowl can only be a maximum of 7cm deep on the outside. Less, if you want to avoid the screws when parting. Which you should if you like your tools...

Instead of screwing the blank directly to the faceplate, you can glue it to a sacrificial piece of wood and set the screws into that instead. This is my preference. For this I use either hot-melt glue (and a hair-dryer to seperate) or normal PVA glue. When using PVA I glue some brown paper between the two pieces, so I can easily seperate with a knife along the shear line. Ummm... for any glues, if you don't want the wood to seperate prematurely and depart the vicinity of the lathe at high speed I recommend both giving the glue a couple of days to set properly and using a light touch on the tools!

There's probably hundreds of other methods but these should give you some ideas...

As for chucks, do not buy a cheap one. Save your pennies and go for a good name brand, eg. Teknatool or Vicmarc. You won't regret it, they're better quality and there's a wide range of jaws to suit each. I can recommend Teknatool's Nove Precision Midi, I think the Supernova is a tad too large for your lathe, you'd be spending extra $$$ for capacity you couldn't use...

i used a sacrificial piece of wood for the first time last weekend.
ended up using a piece of MDF and PVA glue, you just need a good base to glue onto. MDF is good stuff to turn, nice shaving came whizzing off,
soft too. all very easy.
tony

Thanks for the advice, i got stuck into it on saturday, i have some dried branches from gum trees,good to practice with, i even did a small goblet with a ring around the stem. i turned a bowl with the mango blank i got from the ACT wood show for a $1.00, i screwed it to the face plate and stood back but it stayed there, it all went good, did a couple pens, i will try the glue method next weekend, i found out a sharp tool is a good tool, had the grinder handy to, only a cheap set of chisel looked a bit rough after sharpening, but i will get there practice is the best way to go,

Steve

Sounds like you got carbon steel tools. Don't let them get hot on the grinder as the metal will turn very brittle. Have a bucket of water close by and keep the tool cool while you sharpen.

i picked up the chisles from bunnings $30.00, they where burning a bit, saves wrecking the ones i got with the lathe, i got the small set of 5, $300.00 lathe and chisles from timbecon.

As you buy replacement chisels, get ones with HSS stamped into them. They can take more heat from the grinder, although once you get the hang of sharpening you only need to touch them up breifly to get a good edge on them again. There is also another grade of steel which is supposed to be better than HSS in that it doesn't mind getting hot and it holds its edge better, but the letters are escaping me at the moment (HPS maybe, anyone?)

I actually prefer good carbon steel tools for the most part. Although they're harder to learn to sharpen I've found they hold their edge longer.

I believe the cheap "chinese" sets are CS but only low-grade and quality. They're good to start the learning process on and later to regrind to make one-off custom tools (eg. odd sized ring-chisels) but that's about all. I agree with progressing to HSS tools once you know enough to not waste valuable steel when sharpening but I do think every turner should try at least one or two good quality CS tools. There's a world of difference to the cheap stuff!

I'm waiting for someone to put out a line of diamond edged turning tools that never require sharpening.

With my luck I'd find a nail on the first blank.

Hmm, I find my carbon steel tools take a finer edge than HSS but don't keep it for very long at all.