Turning a Hollow Vessel

We're shooting this video at the AWFS show. And this is a really cool thing in the Easy Wood Tools booth. And we're going to do a couple of things here. We're going to talk about carbide tools in general. Doug's going to give us some background on that and then Easy Woods got a really interesting new turning set that they just are releasing. And Christie's going to talk to us about that. So first off, Doug, thanks for having us in the booth and give us just a little bit of what's the deal with carbide tools. Why do people want to go that route? They're easier to learn. There's not a learning curve with sharpening the carbide or the, the tools themselves. So all you have to do is pick up a tool, you learn how to get on center with the tool, and then when it dulls a little bit, you just take the screw and you unscrew it, turn it just a little bit, just to get a fresh cutting edge, and then tighten it back down and you're off, off and running again. So no learning curve. So let's hit on that, getting a fresh edge part again. And so when we've got a chisel and a user's got a, they come to realize that this part is dull, just walk us through here, what it is they're going to do. So when you're on it on the lathe and you realize your tools getting dull, you just loosen the screw, you turn it a quarter of a turn, tighten them back down, and you're back in there doing your business inside the vessel. So what's cool about this is I think a lot of woodworkers are a little apprehensive about learning to sharpen. And one of the things that's neat about carbide tools is you don't stop to sharpen. You stop a couple seconds to pivot to a new spot. And you're good to go again. All right, Christie, we're going to come to you and the tools we're talking about today, the new set, is all about hollowing, right? Correct. Thank you, George. We're really excited about this product. This is brand new. We brought it out about a month ago. First introduced it. We had, we noticed there was a real need in the wood turning community for small project work. You're seeing a lot more work being done with hollow form, small scale, finials, all of these cool things going on. And turners really had a challenge, not being able to get into tight spaces. So we went into our lab where we're doing our research and came up with a downsized version of our full size hollowers, but in a mini format to allow you to get into really tight corners, really kind of get that nice detail work and more importantly, be able to get into a vessel that could only have about what two inch diameter opening and be able to clean that out. So what we have as our three-piece mini hollowing set. Doug is showing that. Comes in a straight, a 45, and a 90 degree angle. And you'll notice that with the tight corners you can really kind of scrape inside that, really clean that vessel out, get that nice detail work that you're looking for in a small project. More importantly, what we're doing a little differently on this one is all of our tools come with our standard carbide cutters on them, replaceable carbide cutters. About a year ago, we introduced our negative rake carbide cutters, which are really for man-made materials, ultra hardwoods, and the reason they're good for those materials is they're less aggressive. So when we came out with this product what we realized is you're doing small, tight work. There isn't a lot of tolerance in there and a lot of room for mistakes. So this product, we decided to ship it with our negative rake cutter standard on that toolbar. So that when you're doing that small work you're going to get a nice, clean, smooth edge on there. And same principle, when you're, when it's dull, rotate it, remove the screw, rotate it, tighten that back down and you have a fresh clean edge. So this is a really exciting product. You can purchase them individually, but more importantly, we have it in an actual three-piece set that comes with its own storage container as well. And one of the things I like about the negative rake concept is that where, when you're reaching in, we inherently end up cantilevered past the tool rest a little further than you normally would. So if you've got an aggressive cutter on there, there can be a little bit more tendency to get a catch that's, you know, it's a big Seesaw and it's taking advantage of that aggressive cut and maybe leveraging the tool a little bit. So the negative rake, less aggressive cut, which means also it's going to make that a little more user-friendly, right? It's safer, essentially. All of our tools really are designed to be a safe alternative in turning. You're holding them on center. Same thing. You're putting your toolbar on, or your tool on center, on your rest and parallel to the ground. So you're not lifting that tool up for a catch. The negative rake cutter, absolutely, they're even more safe because of that, because you're not digging in. You're not going to get that catch. Those that might kind of creep over that edge a little more aren't going to be prone to catching on there. So a good point, George But then too, if, if somebody gets the set which comes with a negative rake, but they want the more aggressive cut, they can swap cutters? Absolutely. All of our toolbars have the coordinating ID numbers that are on the toolbar. So you can alternate back and forth between negative rake and standard cutters. So while we ship them with the negative rake, you can still order a standard cutter, as we call them standard and negative rake, you can order the standard and actually swap that back out. All right, very good. Well, thanks, Doug and Christie for having us in the booth and giving us the walk through on the tools and from here we're going to get a chance to use those tools and actually put them to work. Let's look at making a hollow vessel and it's a neat turning project because what we do, part of the goal here is, let's leave a little hole at the top, but get that hollowed inside. And in order to do that, we're going to use a set of chisels that are very specific to hollow vessel turning. And one chisel to start with, two more chisels to kind of neck us into the turning as we go. We'll talk more about those once we actually start on the inside. First step for me at this stage is a little bit of outside shaping. I want to get this just to kind of a sphere shape. That's what I'm going after. So there, now that I said it, I have to stick to that shape. So little work on the outside here, and then we'll start the hollow vessel part. It's a nice piece of cherry. And before I jump to the inside, let's do a little detail here on the outside. I'll show you. V cutter. And then, we've already got a little bit of a detail from the V cut. Next thing I'm going to do is use this piece of wire between two handles. Get it into that V cut. And with some down pressure, we'll get friction. Friction is heat and it's going to put a neat burn accent right there. Just like that. Just like that. Pretty happy with the shape. Now I'm going to get rid of that nub at the top. Ready for the hollow chisel part of the show or hollow vessel part of the show. What we're going to do is create a small opening here at the top, I'm going to, I'm going to knock that spindle off there first. Alright. Now we're going to create a small opening at the top and just continue reaching in, reaching in, reaching in. Starting with this chisel, and there'll be a point where as I'm reaching in I can only go so far because there'll be a whole edge and a whole edge. And the tool is there to rub on that. And then in this direction, of course, eventually I just plain run out of chisel. One of the things that'll make life easier for you here is if you can reverse direction on the lathe then running that way, I can work like this instead of like this. If you're going to do that you want to be sure you've got a chuck with set screws in it that lock onto the spindle so that this can't come unscrewed while you're running in reverse. This one is already locked in place, switched to R in reverse. Quite a ways to go still, but I want to point a couple of things out. One, I got to do this every once in a while because the chips can't really just fall out of this, like they can in a conventional bowl. So you've got to get in there and clear the chips every once in a while. This is the angle I was talking about here. Eventually it'll get to where as I'm trying to cut here, I would start to rub here. Then we change chisels. And as I reach in this way, eventually I run out of chisel and I can't reach any further. So I'll just keep going on this hollowing process. I'm also going to use this chisel just to clean up my top a little bit, but I'm going to keep going on the hollowing process and then I'll point out when we're ready for a chisel switch. Now, as I'm doing this, I'm also feeling where am I at inside here? Because of course we can't see what we're doing, but we can feel with our finger and you can listen. And what you're listening for is that as the wood gets thinner, the pitch gets higher. So I'll talk about this when we get to it. I can go just a little bit further with this chisel and then we're going to have to swap chisels. Cleaning up the rim a little bit. Nice. Now chisel swap. Next thing I'm going to do is use this chisel and that's going to let me get under the rim and work on this part of the vessel right here by reaching around. I want to do this step first, before I go to this chisel, which will let me work down here. So I don't want to have a thin wall here while I still have cutting to do at the top. Get this thin, then work your way down toward the bottom. And for this, we're going to bring the lathe back to it's forward rotation. Now here's a good spot to listen. Listen here. Listen here. Go again. Thin wall, thicker wall. One of the things you want to be careful about is as we exit, I'm just really taking my time coming out of there because if I catch the rim, I'm going to chip it. We're pretty clear a dust, a little bit in there, but now I'm to a point where nice thin wall right there, I can feel how thin that is between these two fingers. Real thin, right there, little thick right there. So now I'm going to switch to this chisel which will let me get after that part of the vessel and basically start working my way down, coming across the bottom to get that part caught up to where everything else is. Oh, that's nice and thin right here, here, here. Just a pass or two at the bottom and this baby's going to be done. We're very, very close. A little bit of sanding. And then I can part this off from the bottom, I'll also get some finish on while it's still on the lathe. And that takes care of our hollow vessel process. Really, you want to be careful, you want to be conservative as you're getting in here, to make sure that you don't take too much off cause suddenly a thin wall can become a broken wall. And I'm probably down in this cherry, I'm down to about an eighth inch throughout, right here. That looks great. Real happy with how that came out. Big key to this is using the specialized chisels that let you get in there and make the cut you need to make