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Why??? Well, because.....

R

robo hippy

Joined
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So, I have been turning a fair amount of Oregon Myrtle wood, which is actually the California Bay Laurel, but that is a marketing thing.... The problem I have been having is with getting clean cuts. Most of the time I sharpen gouges, scrapers, and shear scrapers on the 180 grit CBN wheels. I was only getting fair results, but I wanted better. I tried the 320 wheel and the 600 wheel for edges and burrs, and still got the same results. On a whim, I went to the 80 grit wheel. Much better results. Flash back to the old coastal turners who used just the Big Ugly tool, and they sharpened on 60 and 80 grit standard grinding wheels. They did all of their work with that tool, including shear scraping. The debate about coarse/fine grit continues..... Some times if you experiment around enough, you find the solution. Well for one piece of wood...

robo hippy
 
I am guessing that you are dealing with straight grained myrtle. I have turned several pieces from the burl and found quite docile.
 
Myrtle wood..... yeah, I remember the Myrtle wood "factorys" along the Oregon coast. They advertised only two places in the world where it grows, the Holy Lands and the Oregon Coast. Are the shops still there?

I never quite got it since I didn't think myrtle was an especially good looking wood. The shops were interesting to take tours of though. First time I saw an ancient coring machine in operation. They must have had hand turners, but I don't recall seeing them.

Back in the day farther down the coast in the California redwoods shops were selling chunks of burl. I still have a 1" thick slice. 8 Years ago I stopped along there looking for a burl chunk. Nope, apparently nowadays it's way too valuable to sell as anything other than finished tourist trinkets.
 
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Doug Rasmussen said:
Myrtle wood..... yeah, I remember the Myrtle wood "factorys" along the Oregon coast. They advertised only two places in the world where it grows, the Holy Lands and the Oregon Coast. Are the shops still there?

I never quite got it since I didn't think myrtle was an especially good looking wood. The shops were interesting to take tours of though. First time I saw an ancient coring machine in operation. They must have had hand turners, but I don't recall seeing them.
Click to expand...

I don't find the attraction of the wood either; it always strikes me as grayish and ugly. My neighbor has a large California Bay Laurel (I prefer that name) that overhangs our yard but I won't be asking for any should it ever need to be removed. A friend says the coastal trees are nicer than one finds in the Willamette valley. You can still find some of the touristy myrtle shops along the coast but I think they heyday is long gone.
 
Owen Lowe said:
I don't find the attraction of the wood either;.....
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Doug and Owen, I agree with your comments about straight-grained myrtle. However, the burl can be very pretty. We had myrtle turning shop here in Grants pass when I moved here 25 years ago, but it is long gone now.
 
Great observation, Robo, and thanks for the reminder. It pays to think outside the box. There is no blanket solution, and sometimes the least obvious or intuitive solution is on occasion the best solution.

I did some experimenting honing at 4000 and 1000 a while back, and for the life of me 4000 made for a terrible finish. I even looked at the cutting edge under the my kids' 20X stereo microscope, and the 4000 looked best. In the end, honing didn't do much better for me with a bowl gouge, and CBN wheels seemed to do as well or better than honing, so I only hone with ring tools, and occasionally with a skew if I'm playing around.
 
robo hippy said:
The debate about coarse/fine grit continues..... Some times if you experiment around enough, you find the solution. Well for one piece of wood...
Click to expand...

Well, there you have it Robo........the answer is.....there is no answer that works all the time. The solution is to have multiple options, and if this one doesn't work, you go on to that one, and if that one doesn't work, you try something else! :rolleyes: As experienced as you are, you ought to have plenty of tricks in your bag to be plenty flexible. :D We all tend to make rules for our personal turning repertoire, and rules tend to be self defeating.

-----odie-----
 
Well I mostly turn dry wood. So far honing has always improved the cut and eliminated the tearout. obviously I can't say that about green wood because I turn so little of it.
 
Wet walnut around here has a tendency to tear out on the uphill grain when doing bowls. I dont have any wet walnut right now but will turn some dry pieces and see what happens.
 
The bay laurel never seems to have very straight grain to me, kind of an interlocked grain. It is not a myrtle, or even related to any of the myrtle trees, or the stuff that grows in the Holy Lands... Marketing! I think, the coastal stuff especially, tends to have a lot of silica in it. The coastal trees do tend to have much better color than the valley stuff. As for color, there are huge differences. I got a log last year that was 'tiger striped'. The log had long streaks of black stripes running all through it. Quite rare actually. Colors can range from greys to all shades of browns, golds, some green, and blacks, mostly streaking. I did a table once, and couldn't see it till after the finish was on, but it looked like some one had spilled some burgundy wine on it and then wiped most of it off. The bay laurel is one of those woods that the higher grits you sand to, the more this wood glows. Some times it has a sweet spicy scent, and some times it smells like it came out of the horse stall... If you are in Oregon and turn for shows, you have to have some myrtle.... I do prefer the madrone though.

My source sells to all the Oregon Coastal shops. They are fading away as the older turners age and retire, and no youngsters seem to be taking it up. There are problems finding logs now days. Much of it is being exported, legally and illegally. I wish we could save it all for ourselves.

People go back and forth about finer teeth cut cleaner and stay sharp longer, Glenn Lucas is one, and coarser teeth cut cleaner and stay sharp longer, Mike Mahoney is one. There is no one size fits all solution. Kind of like we turners, all woods are different, and some are more different than others....

robo hippy
 
I did receive a 12” x 12” x 4” block of Oregon Myrtle/California Bay Laurel from robo hippy, (thank you Robo), got it oh about 3 years ago, turned a footed platter and a tray out of it.

I found it not an easily turned wood, I found it rather a soft wood and this piece had some wavy grain also, but with my more traditional ground bowl gouge I did get a good surface, (I still use the normal carborundum grey/green wheels, they sharpen my tools just fine, skew does get a different treatment and is honed).

I found the wood quite nice when finished with chatoyance and this piece has some dark lines, contrasting with the more golden color of the rest of the wood, finish is Polymerized pure Tung Oil.

California Bay Laurel.jpg
Oregon Myrtle.jpg

1 California Bay Laurel.jpg

1 Oregon Myrtle.jpg
 
One thing I have learned is if I get tearout going to a tool.with a smaller radius almost always gives me a better cut. I often change to the Hunter #5 or mini Osprey if I cant use my 3/8" spindle gouge.
 
Yes John I have found that also, that also helps a lot when turning larger thin walled pieces, the small tool takes less force to make the narrower cut and will cause less shattering and distortion of the wall while cutting (I do consider the carbide pieces still scrapers that will work but are not the equivalent of gouges IMO) I rather use a acute gouge than the throw away pieces of carbide, to each his own I guess.
 
The Hunter carbides cut extremely well.when used as bevel rubbing tools. I.often demonstrate this by making a cut with my 40/40 ground bowl gouge and then the mini Osprey. You cant tell the difference in cut quality.
 
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