On 4/4/2011 11:11 PM, Mac Davis wrote:
On Sun, 03 Apr 2011 12:26:50 -0700, Bill Noble
wrote:

On 4/3/2011 6:05 AM, Jack Stein wrote:
On 3/30/2011 2:02 AM, Mac Davis wrote:
On Tue, 29 Mar 2011 11:32:21 -0700, Gary Kunstmann
wrote:

What is the safest method to trim the excess from red oak 2 X 2 spindle
blanks before turning?
IMHO, on something as small as 2x2, the only way is on the lathe..
A roughing gouge will round a 12" blank in a few minutes.. A carbide
tool in seconds..
My favorite roughing tool is the Bowl Pro:
http://www.woodchuck-tools.com/Tools.htm

I like a standard large roughing gouge which also works in seconds.
Large being the key.

Looking at the bowl pro, and some others, the business end looks like a
standard segmented planer knife that is on my grizzly planer. Looks like
a fun project to make one of those with one of my spare inserts. I like
the carbide idea, should last a while...

http://www.grizzly.com/products/Inde...-10-Pack/H7319


or

http://tinyurl.com/3j3wek7


1. beware of large roughing gouges - they take dramatically more skill
than a 1/2 or 3/4 inch gouge and can easily catch - just use a 1/2 inch
spindle gouge - for little blanks like that, if it takes you 30 seconds
to round them off with a 1/2 inch gouge you aren't doing it right

2. suggest you eschew carbide - it's not needed, it's brittle and it
doesn't take the type of edge you need for wood - use it if there is a
lot of grit or metal in the wood and you have to do a lot of cutting,
but otherwise just use HSS

I think this is the first time I've disagreed with you, Bill!
The inserts (bought in a 10 pack) are $4 each and I've acently cut
through nails and barb wire with them and had to rotate them where my
bowl gouge would need reshaping..
I've spent years trying to perfect my sharpening and I can't get an
edge half as sharp as the carbide inserts..

very interesting - with a sharp HSS tool, I can get a fine finish that
needs little sanding, and with a 5/8 bowl gouge, I can peel out shavings
that are, well 5/8 wide by about 1/4 inch thick from wet wood before I
run out of lathe horsepower - they come out steaming - I can't do that
with carbide, I get tearout and poor finish. I do use carbide on my
metal lathe and mill, but even there I need to be careful that it is
sharp enough if I want a decent finish - I've made the comparison and my
results differ. And, yes, I've cut through nails with a bowl gouge, and
before I got my metal lathe, I used HSS gouge to cut steel and aluminum
with no problems (just had to keep speed down) - of course not with the
precision of a metal lathe, but it works - in fact if I want to shape an
elegant finial out of aluminum, I use a fingernail grind bowl gouge and
hold a boring bar in the cross-slide as a tool rest
--
www.wbnoble.com