"Bill Gooch" wrote in message
.. .
Basically the sliver came up the flute of the chisel, hand was resting
against the tool rest. Thanks for comments, guess I got my answer.
Curious to know what "cutting across the fiber" means.


Goes to the principle of spindle turning, where you cut down hill, across
the direction of the "grain". What you want to do is have the most vertical
portion of your edge at centerline to make the final separation of shaving
from the piece. Think of how you cut one side of a bead with a gouge. You
move in and down, with the gouge at a shear angle. With a face-grained bowl
the "down" is taken care of by the rotation, you merely control the shear
and the "in," which is along the toolrest. As soon as the shaving begins,
the shear is re-referenced continually against the bevel, so you have only
the movement across the toolrest to control.

Many turners push the nose of the gouge into the rotation of the object.
With a cross grained bowl, that means two areas where the end of the tool is
picking up unsupported fibers, leading to things like splinters, bouncing
gouges, and torn grain to be sanded. if, instead, the cut is made across
the rotation from center to rim, the shavings fall neatly beneath or down
the gouge without picking up or flying around. This is a lot easier on the
turner, because s/he can move the toolrest in close, taking the thrust of
the wood onto the toolrest rather than the elbow. It works best with a
broader pattern gouge, which can support itself against the wood to prevent
rotation. When I'm showing off, I often take one hand off the gouge and
continue the cut with the other - easier with the "good" hand, but possible
with both, since I have the gouge against two good references, the rest and
the piece.

You can do this with the swept back portion of a bowl gouge, of course, but
then the force vector is mostly along the tool, rather than across it, into
the rest. You're obliged to control two out of three orientations, rather
than one.