Understanding a Starter Set of Lathe Chisels
George VondriskaDescription
Are you ready to buy your first set of lathe chisels? Do you need a gouge, scraper, or parting tool? Or all of the above? Here’s some great buying advice that will help you choose your chisels. In addition to learning what chisels you need, you’ll see how the chisels are used.
I really enjoy working on a lathe, and a question I get from a lot of woodworkers is, when they're getting started, what makes up a good starter set of lathe chisels, for spindle work, and what do each of those chisels do? So, great opportunity here, to give you that information. We're gonna go through each of them, and first I'm gonna show you the profiles, so you understand what they look like, and then we'll see the cuts they actually make, on this chunk of walnut I've got on the lathe here. So, first off, let's talk about a roughing gouge. This is a roughing gouge. Now chisels are indicated by their size, so this is a one inch roughing gouge, the distance across those corners. They get bigger, not too much smaller than this, but as you shopping for roughing gouges, this is a pretty good size to start with. Here is a conventional spindle gouge, this would be a one inch spindle gouge, again measured across the width of it, from kinda corner to corner, out here, round on the end, beveled on the back, and then similarly, we'll look at another spindle gouge, profiles the same, bevels the same, but smaller, so lets you do more detailed work, this is a three eighths spindle gouge, and then, our friend the skew. Skew is just a word for anything that's at an angle. So the tip of this chisel has been skewed with that angle, beveled on both sides, and again we're indicated here by width. This is a one inch skew, you can get them narrower, you can get them wider, but this is a great starter size. And a parting tool. Parting tools have kind of a funky tip on them. They come to a V, then there's also this raised area, on each side here, and it has to have that, you'll see why when we use it, to make our cuts. Parting tools are very commonly used in conjunction with calipers, and they really work hand in hand, so we'll have a look at what those two do together. Now, what we'll do is, we'll get this turned round, and then, once it's round, we'll go through each of those chisels and what they do. Need to have face protection on when you're working on the lathe, or have a face shield for this, as opposed to goggles, because it gives my whole face, protection from the junk flying off of here. We'll start out with a roughing gouge. Roughing gouges are used, whoops, that's not a roughing gouge, that's a roughing gouge. Roughing gouges are used to get the blank, from square to round, and we are good to go. Now, I think you can see, with the roughing gouge, we're making pretty short work of that spindle, we're getting it down to round, pretty darn fast. I'm gonna come down here and work on this end. Bring my tool arrest in closer, because we've reduced the diameter, and I'll finish her up. When I lay the chisel on there, I'm checking for round. If it still bounces, you've got corners or flat spots. If it doesn't bounce, you're round. Now, if you don't have a roughing gouge, in your starter kit, that's okay. You can do the work I just did there, with a convention spindle gouge, you want to use a wide one, like this one inch. Let me show you that cut. Now the deal with roughing out, is that, you've got a surface here that isn't great, it's round, but it doesn't look real nice. So, one way we can fix that, is to go to our skew, and the way we use the skew is just simply flat against the spindle. Everything I'm showing you here, is with a scraping action. Shearing would change things a lot, we're not going to cover that in this clip, but we'll talk about using a shearing technique to level out, all these high and low spots left behind by the gouges. So, one application of our skew, is leveling a spindle, once we've got it roughed up. Another one is to make beads, those are high spots, or external profiles, or you want to put onto a spindle like this. So, I'll start out by just marking out some bead locations. Let's do one there, let's do one there, and the way that we'll use the skew for this, is put the tip of the skew into the material, sweep across, tip of the skew in, sweep across. Refine the shape, let's do it again over here. Tip, sweep. So, two big things with the skew, leveling the work, and making beads, like I made right there. Now, that gives us an external, what about an internal. Well, if only we had something that was round on the tip. So, with our gouge, start doing the same thing, we can mark out where we want a cove or an internal to go, and then really we're just transferring the shape of the gouge, to the material. The benefit to that smaller gouge I showed you, is that we could do a narrower cove. And of course that big gouge that I had initially, wouldn't even fit in there. So, it's handy to have a couple different sizes of gouges. Parting tool, can do couple of different things for you. In a parting action, we would use a parting tool a lot, to establish something at a specific diameter. So, what I would do, is, I would set my calipers to some size that I need to produce on my spindle. Then, the parting tool gets used on edge like this, to make a groove kind of a cut in our spindle blank. And then we'll test, a little bit of a cut, a little bit of a test. Once the calipers slip on, with these two working together, we know we've turned that to a specific diameter. The other thing that you can do with a parting tool, is do a little bit of decoration by using it, instead of on it's edge, use it flatways, bring the tip in, and see how I made that V-cut. We can widen it a little bit by swinging the parting tool. So, in a common set of spindle turning chisels, you may, or may not have, the roughing gouge, here, but the skew, a gouge, preferably a large and a small, and a parting tool. These four tools are gonna get you really far in your spindle turning, and again, parting tool, in conjunction with a set of calipers, will let you turn specific diameters like that. This gives you an understanding of the tools, what they do, how they do it, and what you need to add to your shop, so that you can get started on spindle turning.
‬ What is a spindle detail gouge? How is it different from a spindle gouge? Thanks!
What is a spindle detail gouge? How is it different from a spindle gouge? Thanks!
Hi George. Speed! New to turning. What speed should we start out at? Especially related to this vid? Also, How can I add this to my youtube list? This is a great way to practice starting out with the tools. Tyvm. Great vid.
It is my understanding that whenever you purchase a set of lathe chisels they are not ready to be used as you must sharpen them and hone them first. I also understand that when you sharpen them you grind the chisel to your desired angle, 60deg, 45 deg, or whatever. What do you consider to be a good angle for beginners? I figured that I would start off with pen building then moving on to bowls etc. Do bowls etc. require a different set of chisels? Please elaborate, thanks.
Love these videos.
Hi, I am new to wood carving. Could you please tell me what is the name of the equipment you used for spinning the wood? Cheers
Thanks for the video, I'm right in that boat of needing to buy some lathe chisels. I guess the only thing I'm still confused about is the difference between the roughing gouge and the large spindle gouge. You said that you can use the spindle gouge, but I might have missed the advantage of using the roughing gouge instead. Thanks again for the info :)
Thanks for a great refresher. I'm a Premium Member of WWGOA, but I still appreciate all the free info you provide woodworkers to keep them safe and productive.
Thanks George, I just bot a lathe so after a few decades since my last turn I enjoyed your bit of a refresher As always, your videos get us back in the shop.
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