Introduction:
Since I wrote Turning Wood in the early 1980s, the craft of
woodturning has undergone a reformation. And that was after it
developed in leaps and bounds in the very late '70s. In the early to
mid-'70s, it was difficult to find another woodturner, and the range
of tools and equipment available was extremely limited. Today there
are numerous woodturning clubs all over North America, Europe, and
Australasia as well as a number of national associations.
Woodturning symposiums run by clubs and associations have
disseminated information, while specialist woodturners' stores offer
a bewildering array of stuff pertaining to the lathe. New chucks
make life a whole lot easier, and lathes are better than ever. And
while most turners are content to make a fairly conservative range
of traditional forms and objects, others are not. Some are
determined to get their turnings accepted as serious works of art
that will make their way into art galleries and into the hands of
woodturning collectors, who in turn (so to speak) have their own
association. The craft is now a long way from its mass-production
origins.
I took to woodturning as a practical means of earning a living,
fearing that technology would eliminate me as a middle manager. I
was probably wrong about that, but at the time I felt that the
sooner I learned to do something practical the better -- but it had
to be something that couldn't be done by machine. So on January 1,
1970, I drove west with the dawn of a new decade, leaving London
big-city life and a very well-paid job for an uncertain but
hopefully more fulfilling life as a craftsman. I never once
regretted the decision.
I chose to be a woodturner totally on a whim. When discussing
with my sister (an established potter) how I might earn a living,
she suggested woodturning and a place where I might be able to learn
just up the road from the studio where she trained. For no good
reason, the idea appealed to me and I decided to give it a go,
knowing that if I didn't like the craft after a couple of months, or
if I was totally inept, I could try something else. I had absolutely
no knowledge of the craft other than it involved lathes and tools
with rather long handles. I chose woodturning not because of some
long-standing love affair with wood or trees, but because I felt
intuitively that I could learn the basics of turning more quickly
than almost any other hand skill. And an internal voice told me it
was the right thing to do.
My intuition proved correct. During five months in a country
workshop, I was not taught as such. I had to learn by watching and
listening, as the skilled journeyman Rendle Crang cranked out the
workshop's production on the other side of the tiny dusty workshop.
Using the monkey-see-monkey-do approach, I got to know the rhythm of
production turnery, what my shavings should look like, and which
noises I should be making and which I should not. And I learned
enough to produce well-made bowls, lamp bases, plates, and scoops,
which were destined to pay all my basic bills. I did not have the
skills to turn enough merchandise for a decent living, but I cobbled
together enough of a livelihood by selling to small craft and gift
stores.
It was a time of relative poverty for me. My income plunged 90%
as it dropped a zero, but I'd prepared for this in the earlier
times-of-plenty by ensuring I owned a small house and everything in
it. Debt free, I exchanged my sports car for a more practical
vehicle in which I could carry timber and from which I could hawk my
wares. My major concern had been to find an alternative way of
earning a living, so the immense enjoyment and satisfaction I gained
as I developed the skills of my craft came as a surprise. The long
hours of a self-imposed apprenticeship were no hardship, and
eventually I developed the speed to get a good return on the hours I
spent at the lathe.
If I had a problem, it was working alone with no mentor from whom
I could get advice. I discovered almost everything the hard way --
buying poor lots of wood, ruining nearly completed bowls, and so on.
But on the positive side, there was nobody telling me I was doing
things the wrong way. Despite the fact that I'd been told that real
turners don't use scrapers, I adopted an uninhibited approach in
search of my own solutions to what I later discovered were all the
classic woodturning problems.
If one technique failed, I tried another, and I reckon I've
experienced every conceivable way of cutting, hacking, and scraping
wood on the lathe. Pieces often flew off and bounced about the
workshop (and still do occasionally), but I learned a great deal in
the process. In particular, I learned that real turners do use all
manner of scraping techniques but not for spindle work. Some
instruction undoubtedly would have helped me get started, and this
book aims to make life easier for novice turners than it was for me.
No matter what you want to turn on a lathe, you need to have a
good set of technical skills if the work is to be enjoyable and
fluent. And fluency always makes for a better object. The techniques
set down in this book show the way I go about turning wood. They are
the result of an odyssey of 30 years in which I meandered the
highways and byways of woodturning. They serve me well, but they are
subject to instant alteration should anything better come along.
In the 18 years since I wrote the first edition of this book,
I've been exposed to a lot of ideas as I've traveled the
international woodturning circuit teaching and demonstrating. Fresh
insights have been tested, adapted, and refined during my normal
production work, and as a result many of my techniques have changed
considerably since the mid-'80s.
This is a manual of hand techniques. I have tried to explain how
to cut any internal or external surface and what problems and
hazards to expect. I've tried to keep in mind the difficulties
students commonly encounter, and if I repeat myself in the text, it
is because I know these things tend to be forgotten in the mass of
stuff to remember. To make the book comprehensible to readers
everywhere, measurements are both imperial and metric. For the sake
of expediency, most measurements have been rounded to the nearest
5mm.
Novices should be able to work through the exercises in
centerwork and facework, practicing the cuts and enjoying the
shavings while developing tool control. Even if you're not remotely
interested in making spindles, do the skew chisel exercises. You
will learn all the basics of the craft and tool control, and the
time spent will be richly rewarded. Further skill-building projects
are in Turning Projects and Turning Boxes if your
interest lies in that direction. Turned Bowl Design will help
you make better bowls.
Those who know a little more should find much that is useful
here, whilst gaining an insight into one professional's approach.
If you have never turned wood before, I'm sure you'll enjoy it.
Shapes develop in seconds as the shavings fly away, and I have a
hunch that the ability to remove so much wood so quickly satisfies
some basic destructive urge and gratifies the vandal in us all.
Table of Contents:
The Lathe
How It Works
The Headstock
The Tailstock
Centers
The Bed and Stand
Switches and Motors
Speeds
Center Height
Tool Rests
Choosing a Lathe
Fixings: Drives, Faceplates, Chucks & Adhesives
Drives
Faceplates
Chucks
Adhesives
Cutting Tools: Selecting & Sharpening
Selection
Sharpening
Honing
Afterword
Safety, Tool Handling & Cutting
Overall Safety
Tool Handling
Cutting
Measuring
Centering Blanks
Marking Out Spindles
Outside Diameters
Inside Diameters
Diameters on a Face
Inside Depths
Wall Thickness
Shortcuts
Centerwork
External Shaping
Hollowing
Facework
External Shaping
Hollowing
Pushing Your Limits
Decoration
Finishing
Abrasives
Oil-and-Wax Finishes
Afterword
Appendix A: Troubleshooting
Appendix B: Selecting and Seasoning Wood
Index
Soft-cover, 8-1/2 x 10-7/8 in., 208 pages, with
color photos and drawings
Published 2001
Book ISBN: 978-1-56158-417-8
Turning Wood
with Richard Raffan
Book
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