1.5 ENDNOTES
1. Hasluck, Paul Nooncree. The Wood Turner’s Handy Book. London: Crosby Lockwood, 1921. (Originally published in 1887.)
2. Dunbar, Michael. Woodturning Techniques. Cincinnati: Popular Woodworking Books, 2017, p. 6.
3. Nish, Dale L. Artistic Woodturning. Provo, Utah: Brigham Young University Press, 1980, p. 23.
4. Woodham, Jonathan H. Twentieth-Century Design. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997, p. 29.
5. Regester, David. Woodturning: Step-by-Step. London, B.T. Batsford, 1993, p. 51.
6. Ecke, Gustav. Chinese Domestic Furniture. Rutland: Charles E. Tuttle, 1962, p. 28. (Originally published in 1944.)
7. Gladwell, Malcolm. Outliers: The Story of Success. Boston: Little, Brown, 2008.
8. Krugman, Paul. The Great Unravelling. London: Penguin, 2003, p. 393.
9. Child, Peter. The Craftsman Woodturner. London: G. Bell & Sons, 1974, p. 59.
Chapter 2
SMALL TURNING TOOLS
To turn some of the projects in this book you’ll need tools with small noses. (I use nose to mean the sharpened edge and adjacent surfaces of any woodturning gouge, chisel or scraper.) In this chapter I discuss how to source small-nosed parting tools, skews, and detail gouges.
Manufacturers do make small-nosed tools. As figure 2.1 illustrates, their blade cross sections are usually constant along their blades’ lengths and are typically scaled-down versions of the blade cross sections used for general turning. That approach too often results in blades which flex in use and thus cause catches.
Most turnings with narrow coves typically have maximum diameters less than 50 mm. Manufacturers perhaps therefore ignore the reality that their small-nosed turning tools will sometimes be used with tool overhangs considerably longer than 25 mm. Tool overhangs can be minimised by continuallly moving the toolrest forwards, but this is undesirable because it:
• cramps your tool manipulations
• slows the rate of production
Figure 2.1 A HSS detail gouge which flexes in use. Its exposed length is 70 mm, and its diameter is 4 mm.
• impairs you seeing both the upper and lower edges of the turning’s profile so that you can readily judge and compare diameters and forms.
This chapter therefore considers how to source stiff-bladed, small-nosed versions of the main tool types, and ends by showing three diameter gauges and a calliper which you’ll find ideal when turning smaller diameters.
2.1 PARTING TOOLS
Narrow parting tools are manufactured and easily ground from wider parting tools (figure 2.2). Spindles should be parted off with a skew or a parting-off tool, not a parting tool.
Figure 2.2 Four parting tools. From left to right: one with a “diamond” cross section 5-mm wide, one with a rectangular blade 6-mm wide and 20-mm deep, a 2-mm-wide tool, and a 6-mm-wide tool ground to give a 1.5-mm-wide cutting edge.
All are ground and honed to a 30° sharpening angle because they are cutting, not scraping, tools.
By repeatedly and slightly axially rotating a parting tool clockwise then anticlockwise as you thrust it forwards, you cut a slightly wider trench. So as not to indent the toolrest, soften the sharp edges along a parting tool’s blade.
2.2 SKEW CHISELS
As figure 2.3 shows, turners can readily produce small skews by grinding down skews with wider-than-required blades, or by locking bits into stiff shafts. Figure 2.4 explains how I produce the latter type.
Skew chisel blades with circular cross sections are obviously stiffer than thinner, essentially rectangular blades with the same effective cutting-edge length. However when rolling tiny beads with a circular-bladed skew, the blade may have to be traversed “backwards” along the toolrest.
Figure 2.3 Two small, stiff-bladed skews, top 7-mm-wide, bottom 3-mm-wide.
Figure 2.4 Making a turning tool with a bit housed in a stiff shaft.
Here I’ve axially gripped in a scroll chuck a suitable length of steel cut from a 10-mm-diameter mild steel bolt or machine screw. After scraping a small axial recess in the right-hand end of the shaft to accurately center the drill tip, I bored a hole about 25-mm long. The drill’s diameter should be such that the bit will fit snugly within the hole.
For a tiny skew, I use the unfluted part of a HSS twist drill as the bit. For tiny gouges, the bit can be cut from a too-slender gouge shaft such as that shown next to the bedway. I use the edge of a grinding wheel to cut off a bit length.
To lock the bit into the bored hole you could use a suitable adhesive. Instead I usually just use a crisp blow with a hammer on the end of the shaft as shown on the right-hand gouge in figure 2.12.
2.3 DETAIL GOUGES
Detail gouges are extensively used with both axially and transversely grained workpieces. As figure 2.1 shows, smaller sizes are commonly fitted with blades which flex. To overcome this, I’ll first consider detail gouge blade cross sections, then how to grind their noses.
Figure 2.5 shows the ideal detail gouge cross section. Before HSS displaced carbon tool steel, for cutting deep narrow coves, narrow blades with cross sections similar to that shown in figure 2.6 were produced by forging. The resulting blades were rotationally unstable, required more complicated manipulations, and in some cases were still not stiff enough.
Properly-stiff, small-fluted HSS gouges could be created by manufacturers producing detail-gouge blades with cross sections similar to that shown in figure 2.7. I’m not aware that such gouges are currently manufactured. Turners can however produce satisfactory alternatives by:
1. grinding down the nose of a suitable bowl gouge with an effectively small flute radius (this is detailed on pages 15 and 16). Manufactured bowl gouges usually have U- or parabola-shaped flute cross sections and high flanges. Their blades are therefore considerably stiffer than those of detail gouges with the same blade diameter. Also the cross section of the bottom of most