Glue-Up Catches

New turner question. I have been practicing on spindles, and have made a couple of pens and a bottle stopper.

I wanted to make another bottle stopper with 2 woods. I glued 4 maple and cherry squares I had left from a chessboard to make my blank. But after getting it cylindrical with my roughing gouge, I had nothing but problems in the form of catches. Much, much worse than my spindle practicing. I used two difference sizes of spindle gouges. I believe the gouges were sharpened well. My technique is definitely a work in progress, but did the A-B-C, and had the tools resting on the bevel before lifting to cut, cutting downhill – basically all the things I could remember from the readings. I suspect my troubles were because I was dealing with a combination of end grain and side grain due to what I had glued up for the blank. My questions are whether my suspicion makes sense and If that is the case - would better technique have made me successful or is that combination just asking for trouble?

 

End grain on the spindle as it comes around from the top presents an edge the cutting edge can dig into and pull the tool into the work. Best way to deal with it is a shearing cut with the edge at a diagonal to the rotation direction. Same technique a bowl turner uses with a bowl gouge, if you have a bowl gouge you might want to try that instead of a spindle gouge so you can make use of the wings on the cutting edge.

 

It sounds like you are doing peeling cuts, which would mean your tool handle is square to the work. For this type of glue up, you would want your handle at about 45 degrees, with flutes more on the side rather than up and down, and push it from one end to the other. This makes for a shear or slicing type of cut. The peeling cuts will chip out the corners.

robo hippy

 

Al,
For the OP, as a new turner, to understand what's being said, one of your marked up pictures would be really helpful.

 

Thanks for the replies. I wasn't thinking about grain when I started turning my blank, but after it went so poorly I suspected that's what I was fighting. I need to think more about grain before I start turning a project.

 

The overall best solution is to glue up the spindle with the grain orientation in the proper direction. Save yourself a bit of aggravation if you can.

 

Thanks for the help. I get the straw analogy. It's just not always intuitive to me how the analogy applies to an object on the lathe. Sometimes it is obvious to me and sometimes not. I just need get better at visualizing the catch situations before I turn. All part of the learning process.

 

A sharp cutting tool solves many problems for beginning turners, dull cutting tools will make turning a challenge no matter what proper technique is used.