Favorite gouge/grind for hollowing kiln dried wood?

[Matt Meadows]

Lately most of my bowls have been kiln dried largely because I'm a cabinet maker and have bowl-worthy offcuts of thicker Lumber that I happily chuck up on the lathe. Usually these bowls are side grain, not hollowing end grain. And sometimes they are typical glue ups/segmented.

Soon I'll be upgrading my grinder wheels to CBN so while I'm at it I may grab a new gouge and jig.

My main go-to gouges are a 1/2" Benjamin's Best and P&N 5/8" both using an Ellsworth jig to sharpen. The Benjamin's seems to accept the parabolic Flute using the stock instructions a little better.

They seem to hollow the dried wood ok, but what do y'all prefer on dried wood?

 

[Richard Coers]

Kiln dried or dead wet, I use the same tooling. You'll get plenty of recommendations.

 

[hockenbery]

I use the same tools on Dry platter blanks that I use on dead wet natural edge bowls.

One distinction is most dry woods yield a better surface with shear scrapping.
Quite a few wet woods get a poorer surface from shear scraping.

I mostly use an Ellsworth grind on the Jamieson gouge, 3/8 spindle gouge.

 

[Ron Solfest]

I’ve turned hundreds of bowls (1000?), the significant majority of them being glued up blanks of kiln dried wood. When turning green I’m almost always just first turning blanks to dry so really only use a 5/8” bar parabolic flute and watch the ribbons fly

Turning glued up kiln dried blanks my favorite gouge is also the 5/8” bar parabolic flute, ground on 600grit cbn using a wolverine jig. I’ve never really studied grinds but use a semi-swept back wing, a little convex and ~3/4” wing on the 5/8” gouge. For whatever reason I sharpen the 5/8” with the nose angle of 55deg, my 1/2” bar with 50deg angle, my 3/8” bar bowl gouge at 45deg angle; all of my spindle gouges are set at 35deg. Recently I purchased a 5/8” Robust parabolic bowl gouge that I need to sharpen at 60deg to get reasonable performance from? I could probably benefit by spending time experimenting with grinds, but I have more fun turning

Sorry for the digression, back to your subject. I highly recommend having two gouges when turning a bowl from glued up kiln dried, doesn’t really matter to me too much the size (one 5/8 and one 1/2 or 3/8 would work well). One for clearing out 90+% of the wood that then allows you to make the final clean cuts, and the other for those final cuts. You can do it with one, but lots more sharpening is involved. I clear the outside, then make a Final Cut on it with a sharp gouge. Mount the bowl in a chuck and then clear down 1-1.5” with the ‘waste’ gouge, and go back and cut this surface clean with my ‘sharp’ gouge. Repeat this process until just before you cut through the bottom Lastly, the last few months I’ve been using a negative rake scraper to even improve upon this final surface before sanding.

Postscript - you’re going to love Cbn wheels!

 

[robo hippy]

For tools, I go to Doug Thompson V10 powder metal, or Jimmy Allen at D Way with the M42HSS. Their metals are 'best value' in that you get far more for your $. As for grinds, I wore out a couple of the David Ellsworth signature gouges. I do consider that grind to be very useful if you are only able to have one gouge. Basically, that grind will do a lot of jobs very well. If you can get a couple, then I now use the 40/40 grind and a BOB (bottom of bowl) specialty gouge. The special tools do a better job than the 'one size fits all' tools.

As for wet/dry wood, biggest difference is that with dry wood, you just turn slower, and don't usually take off the bigger thicker shavings. Just not possible with dried wood. Air dried is far better than kiln dried wood.

robo hippy

 

[Rusty Nesmith]

I also use the same tool for wet or dry. My favorite bowl gouge for inside of bowls is a 1/2” Thompson with a 55 degree grind and the bottom of the bevel removed.

 

[Rusty Nesmith]

Sorry here is a better picture.

 

[Hugh]

I have been racking my brain to think if I have ever bought any kiln dried turning wood? Don't think I have.

 

[Dean Center]

I had a P&N bowl gouge and could never get an Ellsworth or satisfactory swept back grind on it. I think they have a U shaped flute, which is known to be incompatible. I converted it to a Bottom of the Bowl gouge, and it works very nicely for that.

 

[Matt Meadows]

I have been racking my brain to think if I have ever bought any kiln dried turning wood? Don't think I have.

If you've ever bought board stock, it was most likely kiln dried. Otherwise it won't have the proper moisture content for use in furniture and Cabinetry.

 

[Matt Meadows]

I had a P&N bowl gouge and could never get an Ellsworth or satisfactory swept back grind on it. I think they have a U shaped flute, which is known to be incompatible. I converted it to a Bottom of the Bowl gouge, and it works very nicely for that.

I'm going to look into this. I believe you are correct about the U shaped Flute.