"Bill Rubenstein" wrote in message
om...
You have touched on one of the advantages of a short-bed lathe. With a
long bed, when working inside a bowl, one can't get the handle low because
it will run into the bed. On a short-bed, you can stand on the end of the
lathe and keep the handle low because there is nothing for you to run
into.

Or, you could choose a tool which presented the edge properly for cutting
and took full advantage of tool rest support. That's where the forged
gouges excel, they're the same edge presentation as the wings of a bowl
gouge standing almost vertically when the handle's parallel to the bed.
Then there's the advantage gained by dropping the handle slightly slightly,
rolling into the piece and trailing the final point of cut to fair the
inside. Answer to two problems - tear-out, which is minimized by narrowing
the face of the cut (rolling back toward vertical) inside steepening curves,
and catches, which are made extremely difficult by good tool support on the
rest and bevel, which is ground at the same angle all across, along with the
natural curve of the gouge.

Another thought on the subject -- there are several lathes where the top
surface of the tool rest is pretty wide and sloped at maybe a 50 deg.
angle from horizontal. So, if you hold the handle of the gouge down, the
tool will be resting on the back edge of the top surface of the rest
rather than the front edge. The Jet and Powermatic rests share this
unfortunate design characteristic and I think that they are unusable for
that reason. They encourage bad turning and get in the way of good
turning. I think that many would profit by replacing the original
equipment rests on those machines with ones designed for wood turning.

Sadly, there appear to be nothing but cylindrical rests out there in the
replacement realm. If you know of others, chime in, I'm looking for a
smaller curved one. Resting a cylinder on a cylinder with some control is
difficult to begin with, and with a fingernail grind prone to rotation, even
worse. Of course, you can't get the fulcrum any closer than clearance plus
radius, either. When I transitioned from Ol' Blue to the 3000, I considered
modifying my grinds to suit the new rests, then realized I still had one
old - my "S" rest - to work with. Took a file to the 3000 rests, and never
looked back.