"hwahl" wrote in message
oups.com...

Michael - you didn't mention the type of oak you plan to use, but your
ease of turning the oak will be directly related to your skill of
sharpening your bowl gouge. A 3/8th bowl gouge with a sharp fingernail
grind will handle the endgrain just fine. Ride the bevel and don't hog
it. I use a diamond hone to keep a sharp edge as soon as the gouge
seems to run a bit rough.
Good luck!


The gouge will be departing the new circumference at only one point of
tangency, which means a jig is completely unnecessary. You simply find the
sweet spot and follow it across the toolrest. I might add that it's a lot
easier to use a broader profile gouge than a bowl gouge, because the broader
profile will allow you to brace the gouge nearly perpendicular to the rest.
Most bowl gouge advocates end up resting the gouge more or less beside the
rest to get the same attack profile as the broader radius gouge gives with
much better support. Not that you can't do it with a small radius gouge
held the same as a broad radius, but your sweet spot is correspondingly
smaller, and if the angle of the grind steepens as you depart the nose, as a
lot of jigs are programmed to do, the steeper bevel angle, coupled with the
cylindrical form of the gouge and the human versus mechanical support of the
rest makes it more likely that you can begin end-grain pickup even to the
point of a roll and catch.

Broad gouge with a bit too much nose, but a constant angle grind.
http://personalpages.tds.net/~upgeor...e-to-Shape.jpg

Bowl gouge used as most advocate. Were it not for the shorter wings and the
support of the bright secondary area on the rest, it would be much more
prone to dip and dig.
http://personalpages.tds.net/~upgeor...Bowl-Gouge.jpg

Note that the broader gouge is skewed to the rear and rotated slightly into
the cut to give a broader bevel reference and less ridging. Also examine
the shavings in the first picture, which are thicker at the leading edge of
the cut and feathered thin where the gouge exits the wood, a harbinger of a
smoother surface.

Then there's the additional safety for the turner of being behind the tool,
out of the throw zone with the push versus pull cut.