Straight from Tool turned pieces with Paul Reeves
Thu 15^th August at MWCC Club Night 

Straight from the Tool is a technique that provides the best possible turned surface without requiring any use of abrasives. To perfect this, takes time & skill.
Indeed, it wasn't until the 13^th century before sandpaper was invented in China and before then, any wood turning had to be left as tool finished (with the possible exception of wood shavings and in a few parts of the globe, fish skins)

Trying to complete a turned piece "straight from the tool" shows up one's Tool Control, Tool Sharpness & Lathe's performance in absolute clarity. 
 Control relies upon practice & experience of getting the bevel position correct;
 Sharpness comes with recognizing when a cutting edge needs attention;
 Performance deteriorates from adverse vibrations caused by worn bearings of headstock drive centres and/or tailstock centres or even a lumpy toolrest while moving one's gouge along it.

Some turners have no alternative to turning this way - for example,
 the fascination of Pole Lathe turning is the hand-made look of natural tool finish;
 Ornamental Lathe turning relies upon intricate sharp-edged decorated pieces that would be ruined by sanding.

How many of us take time to just practice using our gouges to achieve a smooth finish, particularly with a 'difficult' wood to work, eg Paraná Pine?  You will quickly discover
 that you need to select the right wood for the project,
 that sharp tool edges are essential and
 that high lathe speed is often your friend.

  Spindle Work
Along Grain : Paul had a piece of Paraná Pine mounted between centres and knocked the corners off with a Roughing Gouge presented at right angles in the first instance to produce a cylinder with a dull finished surface.  This surface was improved by presenting the same gouge angled at about 45º from vertical with the bevel smoothing off the freshly cut surface as it moved along the tool rest. An even better finish is with a Skew Chisel achieved by raising the toolrest so that only the lower third of the tool is in contact with the upper quadrant of the piece, which avoided adverse twisting of the tool in your hand and sliding off the rest. The German Christmas Decoration turners of Seiffen use a square ended tool but angled Skews are invariably used by us. These Skews have cutting edges angled either straight or curved in an arc. The curved type have the advantage of finer control by easily adjusting the cutting point by up/down movements of the handle but the more acute the angled edge cuts the surface, the more difficult it is to stop the cut moving in/out creating ripples so it does demand very steady hand movements. The straight angled Skew is more stable for the occasional Skew user.
 Top Tip : if using any angled Skew, use the edge with the shorter side resting on the toolrest - or in other words, with the acute angled corner uppermost.  Move with your body rocking on your legs rather than moving hands with your arms.
The Skew finish can look and feel like you've sanded down to 800 grit and frankly, any use of abrasive is likely to be detrimental.

Cross Grain : Paul demonstrated different tools one could use.
 ① His ¼" Beading & Parting Tool was shocking at cutting across grain causing multiple pull-outs;
 ② His thin tipped Parting Tool had less contact damage which was fine with close grain woods;
 ③ His Skew had the best finish provided he only cut tiny slithers (about ¼mm) successively but this time with the longer side resting on the toolrest (i.e. sharper angled corner lowermost).

(click for close up view)

Beads and Coves are also cutting across the grain of spindle work and require a recently sharpened Spindle Gouge to cut from larger diameter to smaller. These procedures were previously described back in May 2024 and can be found in 'Spindle Revision' < here >

(click for close up view)

  Bowl Work
As the walls of a bowl comprise of a combination of along/side grain and across/end grain wood, fresh cut blanks will distort as they dry out.
It is essential for the dried blank to be held solidly in your chuck jaws when you are ready to finish it, so some thought should be put into how to rough your bowl in preparation.
Bowl blanks are best roughed out to a wall thickness about 10% of the overall diameter as this is average shrinkage amount around the annual rings and leaves plenty of room to true up later. Some woods eg Alder, Yew hardly move at all whereas Cherry (as you can see from the picture below) moves a lot during shrinkage when the wood also warps in two directions; i.e. the opposite sides that are along grain will shrink closer together and to a lower height than the across grain sides.

(click for close up view)

Paul anticipates this by roughing the blank so that the spigot on the bottom is finished with a pop mark in its centre and pencils the date on the bowl's lip.
If the roughed out bowl is either wide or shallow enough for a chuck key to operate, he additionally creates a dovetail spigot inside the bowl bottom together with a pop mark there too. Note that some chuck keys have hexagonal ball ends that can still adjust the jaws at oblique angles.

Once dried out many months later, the outside spigot will be oval and will need to be re-trimmed circular, ideally to the 'True Circle' jaw diameter in order to be held rigid even if the spigot is only a few millimetres proud.
This can be achieved by :-
 either driving the piece between a Jam Chuck acting against the inside of the bowl and a tailstock centre pressing into the pop mark,
 or if applicable, with a chuck gripping the prepared inside dovetail and with a tailstock on the pop mark.

  Outer Surface
Paul's Walnut rough blank did have an internal dovetail - but first, he gripped the outside oval spigot as best he could with the inside supported by the tail stock in order to level off the lip of the bowl.
Then with the piece remounted with long-reach or o'Donnell jaws to the inside dovetail together with a tailstock to the base pop mark, he re-trimmed the base spigot to true circle as described above.

(click for close up view)

While mounted in this position, he applied pull cuts from the centre to about halfway up the side; if he had continued any further, he would be dragging the tip over wood that was rapidly changing from side grain to end grain twice every revolution, which would end up rough - particularly with hard dried out wood.  In order to give a better surface cut, one can change the pull into a push cut by moving the tool handle from in front of to behind the tip in one deft manoeuvre such that the bevel will now smooth the cut onwards to the lip of the bowl.

Unfortunately, this Walnut bowl was so hard in places that it was difficult for Paul's gouge not to be kicked about uncontrollably.  There were 3 likely explanations :-
  1. Combination of the lathe speed & the gouge were moving too quickly;
  2. Pushing too hard down on the gouge;
  3. Cutting tip was above centre and the hard parts of the grain were ending up bouncing against the bevel resulting in only the softer wood getting cut away leaving the hard pieces getting relatively higher, aggravating the fault.

Incidentally, if one resorted to abrasives at this stage, it would compound the situation because more would be lost off the softer along/side grain than the denser across/end grain resulting in a change of bowl shape.  In Paul's Walnut bowl piece, this was further accentuated as the sides were sapwood and the ends were heartwood.

The solution is to carefully cut away the hard parts in tiny amounts on each pass. All other methods (e.g. scrapers) are likely to result in pull outs.
Sharpening your gouge or changing to a smaller tipped gouge can help.

To remove tool marks, a useful ploy is to use the lower wing of a Bowl Gouge to gently dress the surface with a slight shearing angle.   Be careful to ensure the top wing does not touch the piece with this method.   Many of us sharpen gouges with a 'fingernail' profile whereas a straight edge wing profile is better for this job.

(click for close up view)

Sanding Sealer (quite acceptable for tool finish pieces) will help to stand up the wood fibres making it easier to cut them off. After applying with brush or cloth, pressing paper with lathe turning created heat to help dry the sealer off. Now when you pass your gouge over the piece, wherever the surface is low,  the untouched Sealer shows up as still shiny.
One needs to consider whether the surface you are working will be in contact with food, in which case use water instead of Sanding Sealer to stand the fibres up.

  Inner Surface
With the piece remounted on the base spigot, Paul quickly removed the inside spigot in order to be able to make one continuous pass for the following cuts.  Whenever one stops a cut and restarts again, it is inevitable that a witness line will be left on the surface.
One remedy is to use a curved surface tool.  Although it is better to cut rather than scrape, smooth movements, for example, with a Negative Rake Scraper can provide the finest surface finish. However, the drawback is the edge doesn't last very long and needs regular tickling with the diamond file whenever the shavings become irregular. Reapplying Sanding Sealer often helps when you are near the final passes.

The correct use of a scraper is to position the toolrest so that the tool is slightly handle high with the cutting edge at the 9 o'clock position. If your Scraper (e.g. Taylor Teardrop Cutter) has a round bar sitting on the tool rest, one can avoid the tendency of the end grain parts of the piece from being levered up by twisting the tool anticlockwise such that the scraper edge is at an angle, which will help to slice the surface.

(click for close up view)

Now it is just patience and care to remove all the tool marks as best that you can by trying to reach the same colour without the Sanding Sealer highlighting any lows.
Paul finished with shaping the rim and its inside edge with his Negative Rake Scraper while carefully supporting the outside surface with his fingertips.

(click for close up view)

 

(photos by Rick Patrick & Andy Ogilvie)