| Woodturning
Tools by Chris Zema
The woodturning lathe is the principal
machine in my workshop. I made my first
lathe, which was basically a good machine
but was extremely noisy and could be heard
throughout the house. Something along
the lines of a freight train. It did the
job well, but took too long to adjust
and finishing a piece of work took a long
time. I also made many of my other tools
for woodturning.
I started out by making mainly wooden
salad bowls, but soon tired of that. For
one thing it was very uninteresting making
the same thing over and over again. Also,
a wooden bowl to be used for salad has
to be perfect and finding a perfect piece
of wood is difficult. A wooden bowl intended
for salad also had to be very reasonably
priced. So I soon started to turn decorative
vessels where the sky if the limit.
My second woodturning lathe was a worn-out
old piece of junk. I had to rebuild just
about everything on it. This did turn
out to be a good woodturning lathe, but
the maintenance to keep it running was
too time-consuming, so I decided to buy
the best woodturning lathe I could find
that would be suitable for making any
form or shape I wanted in any size. I
found this in the Stubby-Omega lathe.
The principal tools I use for woodturning
are gouges, scrapers, cut-off tools, and
drills. The rough blank for hollow-form,
vase or bowl is
mounted on the lathe. The lathe turns
the piece of wood, and I support my tool
on a tool-rest and shape the wood while
it is 'spinning'. Various tools are needed
for different shapings.
When I first get the wood, it is usually
a very big piece and requires the use
of a chain-saw to cut it into smaller
pieces that I can put it onto my band-saw
and cut it into blanks for wooden
bowls, wooden
vases , wooden
hollow forms, wooden
platters, etc. That is an important
step, because if you cut the
burl wrong to start with you may have
ruined the whole thing, so you must study
the wood for a while.
The better tool control you develop, the
better the turned wood piece will finish
up.
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