A great summary as far as it goes, but unhelpful body positioning, body movement, and hand/arm mechanics are not addressed by ABC and they easily can negate the benefits offered by ABC.
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Anchor-Bevel-Cut (ABC)
- Thread starter Don Stephan
- Start date
ABC can still help save your toolrest some dings, haha
You have to start somewhere, and ABC is absolutely required by all beginning and intermediate turners. There is some latitude and personal opinion about 'body positioning, body movement, and hand/arm mechanics', though I agree with you they are also very important.
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Absolutely there are many more components.
ABC covers beginning the cut.
A good course will cover
Lathe speed, tool rest height, foot position, tool grip, tool handle position, body movement. Tool feed rate, maintaining bevel contact.
Then the advanced class get the non bevel riding cuts
I was present when someone was teaching some beginners. He started with the ABC but apparently forgot what the letters stood for and made up his own. He started with "A: Address the lathe". It was a bit humorous later, not so much at the time.
JKJ
Exactly! You nailed it....
"Hello, lathe."
He actually said that. "Hello lathe, how are you today?"
Dave Landers
Beta Tester
Address the lathe
Befriend the gouge
Caress the tool rest
? IDK
Befriend the gouge
Caress the tool rest
? IDK
Always Be Cautious!
Going past the center of the bowl can be hazardous.... I was doing a demo up in Washington, Olympia I think, and I went past the center and the scraper came back and bit my thumb.... "Merely a flesh wound!" A couple of band aids and I was able to finish up. Always have a first aid kit for the clubs! I found out, the hard way, at the AAW Symposiums, they have a medical crew on hand just in case. Another "Merely a flesh wound!"...
robo hippy
robo hippy
To me, it’s actually ABCD. Body movement and such is the “D” — Dance! Sway your hips, move your feet forward or back, it’s the dance at the lathe!
Ah, yes, the Woodtuner's Dance. Different types of cuts can require different dance steps!
For planing a cylinder with a skew, I teach to 1st position your feet, legs, and arms to a comfortable position for the END of the intended cut, then without moving the feet bend the knees to move the body, arms, and tool to the BEGINNING and start the planing cut. While planing, bend the knees slowly to move the hips/body/arms/hands to the end of the cut. This keeps the skew at the proper angle over the length of the cut, results in a smooth continuous motion, and the body ends up at the comfortable position.
Most people want to start out standing at a comfortable position for starting the cut, but while planing the tendency is to swing the arms and upper body which messes with the angle of the skew edge relative to the axis of the cylinder. That way they are always moving toward an uncomfortable position which can make the cut harder to control.
Since I start them with the skew I think this helps them to think more about the movement with using other tools later.
All this is far easier to demonstrate than describe in words.
Or a gouge!!!
The above gouge was in the hands of a mate of mine who is a very experienced professional woodturner while he was concentrating on something away from the lathe when the tip of the gouge came in contact with the spinning piece on the lathe and..... bang! The 10V gouge slammed into the toolrest and shattered into pieces that were distributed far and wide. No injuries, but sometimes we can just get too complacent.
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3 guys in my club talked me into doing a bowl class for them after I had decided not to teach any more classes in my shop.
Decided on 3 days. Last day we are doing Natural edge bowls.
The guys are doing great hollowing three nice looking NE bowls with even walls and they are all working toward the bottom.
I’m just standing by watching and listening. I was thinking wow they’ve each got it, pleased with how well they are doing.
One guy finish’s his cut to the bottom turns to ask me something with the tool still inside the bowl - bam multi piece bowl.
About 30 seconds later a second guy does the exact same thing. Two ruined bowls
The third guy says something like “Al did say we could learn things from the other students”
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At this point my disasters are also primarily when distracted, not when turning - say stop the cut to reach for something or answer a question and accidentally stick the tool into the wood. For tricky cuts at demos I tell everyone be quiet for a moment, maybe “everyone close your eyes and don’t watch!”
I can talk during some things, such as tapering a thin spindle with a skew by feel, so it’s hard to get distracted and mess up, but I’ve learned that in general when someone asks a question, remove the tool and hold it away from the wood before thinking and answering. Or better, take a step back away from the lathe. For bandsaw classes in my shop with 4-5 people (on processing green log sections into useful blanks) focus is especially important - get distracted and lose part of a finger. During a cut I don’t even listen or talk until the cut is done and the wood is clear of the blade and off the table. I pick or prepare easy log sections ahead of time, good wood, not too big or tricky to keep stable (although I do discuss HOW I’d cut such a piece). For the larger and tricker things I’m by myself with the shop door locked!
We plan do a 1/2 day classroom bandsaw session for the club sometime in ‘25 - have to think carefully about how to manage that!
JKJ
Almost looks like break on the handle end was at a junction of heat-treated and non heat-treated steel.
And where's the sharpened tip with the bevel? Somewhere in the ceiling?
I've seen the aftermath where someone thought a spindle roughing gouge was good for a big bowl chunk. It has the word "roughing", right?
One place left part of the broken tool stuck in the ceiling as a teaching aid.
JKJ
The tip was never to be found!
The collected shards were tested for harness (HRc) distribution and found to be in spec, so that break at the point where the shaft was machined to fit in a handle is unlikely to be due to variations in heat treatment, but probably more to do with the tang section being cushioned inside the handle when the exposed section of the gouge was slammed into the tool rest.