DIYbanter - A suggested warm up routine for beginning or occasional turners.

Beginning turners or average turners who have been on vacation, or sick,
burnt out, working overtime or doing mandatory holiday honeydo's might
want to warm up on scrap wood before turning expensive blanks.

You can learn technique and method from videos and books and even rcw,
but warming up is fun and good practice, even when turning regularly. My
routine includes most all the tools and cuts I'm likely to inflict on a
defenseless chunk of wood. It is most important that I wear face
protection and use sharp tools.

I keep a bunch of 2X4 scraps from studs etc. but most any scrap would
serve for
warming up. I cut them into about 10 in. blanks and deliberately leave
them as rectangles for better practice in seeing the ghost while
rounding with a spindle roughing gouge.

I center by eye between spur and revolving centers and except for about
2 in. left as is at the headstock, I rough to round, then smooth trying
both skew and shear scraper. Leaving about 3/4 in. at the tailstock, I
mark off the rounded spindle in between with a pencil and make fast &
loose shallow 1 in. beads with a skew.

I convert the beads to coves with a spindle gouge. Then I remove some
coves with a skew and some with a spindle gouge and make a long smooth
downhill curve then a straight taper, again practicing with both skew
and gouge.

Now I peel the tail down with a skew and keep facing off the end with
the tip of the long point til I can do it without a catch. Then I turn
some evenly spaced 1/4 in. beads along the taper with a detail gouge and
burn border accents with a sliver of ebony.

Moving to the headstock, I make a chucking tenon with a 1/4 in. cut off
tool and behind that I gouge a pommel followed with an ogee. Then back
at the tail end I gouge an inch or two of extra thin fragile stem and
finally back at the ogee I separate the spindle with a thin cut off tool
and force myself to throw it (the spindle) in the trash can.

I chuck up what's left on its tenon and drill a short hole in the end
grain with a small gouge. I use a shallow gouge to hollow out with a
show-off back cut, then I try to clean up the mess with a square
scraper. I don't mind practicing sharpening, but I sure don't like to
practice sanding.

For me warming up is fun, takes very little time and pretty much gets me
back to my usual expertise at ineptness. My problem is throwing the pre
game warm ups away. They often look better than my game time
masterpieces. Besides, there isn't much that a Scot can bring himself to
part with.

I've thought about drilling a hole for a screw chuck or a dovetail for a
scroll chuck in the wide side of some 4 in. 2X4's to warm up cutting
side grain, but my bowls usually have enough waste wood to practice on
before making the finish cuts.

IMHO, using all the tools I have that can make all the cuts I'm likely
to need by turning fast and furious; freely with no timidity and with
unrestrained (even if unwarranted) confidence on scrap wood while
wearing a face mask is the key to a good warm up. This is not a chore
and ought to be fun .

Turn to Safety, Arch
Fortiter

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