Thread: First Practice Wood Turning Project with a Few Observations and Questions

I went looking as in the back of my head I could recall something about having to use OR Highly Recommended to use Carbide when turning a certain man made material.

I found this;

https://www.woodturningz.com/downloa...structions.pdf

Originally Posted by cudarunner

I went looking as in the back of my head I could recall something about having to use OR Highly Recommended to use Carbide when turning a certain man made material.

I found this;

https://www.woodturningz.com/downloa...structions.pdf

Thanks, Roy-So far I have only made razor scales with the inlace acrylester. As I recall, it felt just a bit softer and "gummier" than acrylic as I was working it up through the belts. I can see getting a 12-inch blank of this to use half for razor scales, and the other half for a matching shaving brush. I will probably invest in some carbide, but am pretty cleaned out at the moment lol!

In fact, once my skills are up to the expensive tropical woods, I would like to make matching sets with cocobolo, ebony and similar tropical hardwoods: shaving bowl, straight (or DE/Mach III-type razor handle), and brush, all of the same material.

My son the duck hunter is now also wanting to turn duck calls. This may morph into a family thing!

Great thread Aaron. I did order the same lathe. I just habe to wait as its nowhere around my area in stock. I hope to leadn from your mistakes. Lol.

I will check out that vid too. Congrats and hope to see more from your fun.

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Late last nite I watched about 1/2 of that video. It is very good. Thanks for the link.

Wow, have I joined the ranks of the enablers? I hope that Roy will be proud lol, and I too hope to learn from my mistakes! Let us know when you're up and running, Jerry!

Had a chance last night to watch that vid. I had no clue there was so much involved. Looks like i will need to get a couple more tools soon. It was a helpful vid! I may have to watch it again and take notes.

Originally Posted by Gasman

Had a chance last night to watch that vid. I had no clue there was so much involved. Looks like i will need to get a couple more tools soon. It was a helpful vid! I may have to watch it again and take notes.

Yes, there does seem to be quite a learning curve. I have spent hours just watching videos on how to use the skew chisel, including this one with Alan Lacer, who does some truly amazing fine detail work with that huge radiused skew (if you can sit through the endless banter as he bores all those old farts in the demo lol):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VhuGl7n-bNY

I'm so taken with the possibilities and versatility of this amazing tool that I'm thinking about ordering his (very expensive) handmade one from his website.

And then there's sharpening. You know how we make fun of knife guys who think they can hone a straight just because they can sharpen a knife? I feel like one of those knife guys as I'm learning to sharpen these tools with various wheels and diamond cards. I am finding that, with these super-hard M4 HSS steels, a few strokes with the diamonds and some fine dressing with a finger-sized soft ark stone I had laying around leave an edge that will shave bbs on my leg hair, especially if I strop a few strokes on a charged leather bench strop. Maneuvering around the curves on the gouges is another trick-sheesh! Oh, well, I always say I love to learn new things...

I'm learning a lot from Alan Lacer's videos especially. I picked up some square stock poplar to practice concave/cove cuts and concave/bead cuts today like in this video:

Hopefully others just going down this hole too will find these videos helpful.