This new series was inspired by an article published last year in Woodturning by my fellow author Rick Rich, who wrote about an old book first published in 1919 called A Course in Wood Turning by Milton and Wohlers. The book was aimed at high school students in the days when woodturning was taught as a trade and covers a series of exercises and projects to build a student’s skills with the tools of the trade.
I seem to have given myself a mission in life to encourage woodturners to use the skew chisel more, to become less afraid of it, and indeed to learn to love it as I and most of my production turning friends and colleagues do. I have wanted to write a series to help turners improve their skills with this much feared tool for some time, and when I got my hands on a copy of A Course in Woodturning I started developing the idea of a series of articles aimed at building skew skills and demystifying this wonderful, if occasionally frustrating, tool.
My plan for this series is to introduce the tool, in all its many forms, look at sharpening, and the pros and cons of different grinds. I will then introduce the three main types of cut that the skew is used for and give a series of practice exercises to help understand how it works and when to use it. Once the basics are practised, and dare I say mastered, I will introduce some projects that can be done entirely with the skew, which will hopefully build confidence with the tool. I hope you will enjoy following along and making friends with your skew chisel.
Which skew?
There is a vast array of different skew chisel variations available to buy. Choosing one isn’t helped by the fact that professional production turners, all of whom use a skew extensively, all opt for a different version. What this proves to me is that the skew chisel is a very personal tool. In use, they all work in much the same way, but they all have a slightly different feel to them. Anyone that has played a sport involving a racquet, bat, club, cue or some other similar piece of equipment, will know that despite how they look, they are not all the same. I have played a lot of badminton and cricket, sports shops have rows of racquets and bats lined up to pick from. I’m sure golf, tennis and even fishing are much the same. Essentially, they are all the same and the newcomer may just grab the one that looks nicest, or perhaps the one that fits their budget without knowing what
feels right to them. Only time, experience, and lots of use will teach them that their first choice may not be the best choice for them. Stretching my sports analogy a little further, you might borrow a friend’s piece of equipment and play a game with it to see how it feels and sometimes you’ll pick it up and it will just feel ‘right’, or ‘wrong’. The same goes for a skew chisel – we probably all have our favourite manufacturers, and in their range they will most likely have five or six different skew shapes in two or three different widths. I suggest going to a club or friend’s workshop and trying out a few different skews to see which feels right to you. Some people like a big heavy tool, others a smaller, lighter version, there are square, rectangular, round and oval profiles of different widths before you even get into the shape of the grind different turners opt for. Even with this short list, you can see why it is confusing for the less experienced turner.
My own personal favourite is a 10mm beading and parting tool which is a kind of hybrid of a skew and a parting tool. At first glance, it appears to simply be a wide, heavy parting tool but it is so much more than that. I use it so much that I even have my own Signature version which is a more refined tool and comes ground to my specifications. This isn’t a cynical sales pitch though, so throughout this series you will see me using a range of different skews to make the different cuts.
Terminology
Terminology is important so that things make sense to everyone. I have watched various YouTube videos where the terminology has been a bit confusing, so to clarify before we get stuck in, I will share the names of the parts as I see them:
- Long point – the tallest point on the skew when looking at it
- Short point – the shorter of the two points (some people call this the heel but I find that misleading)
- Bevel – the skew has two bevels, more on measuring these later
- Heel – where the bevel meets the shaft of the tool. I like to soften the heel of my bevel by rounding it slightly on the grinder
- Tang – the part where the tool shaft is reduced to fit into the handle
- Ferrule – the metal collar at the top of the handle
- Handle – the bit you hold
When turning, I refer to my hands as ‘front hand’ and ‘back hand’ rather than left and right because I’m left-handed and I’ve always found it annoying to have to mentally swap over whatever a demonstrator says ‘use your left hand to…’ and as I’m left-handed for spindle turning, it would confuse the right-handed readers. So back hand is on the handle and front hand is supporting the tool at the toolrest.
4. Terminology
Sharpening – angles
A note for the mathematicians
The way woodturners measure their angles is technically wrong, but you’ll get used to it. When talking about the skew angle, 15° refers to 15° from 90°, so technically it should be 75°, but we will always use the lowest possible reading for ease. Likewise, bevel angles are measured as the angle of the missing part rather than the angle of the tool, so where each of my bevels is 22°, it might be more correctly measured as 158°, but again, we use the lowest possible number.
Bevel angles
Bevel angles cause a lot of discussion in all tools but especially with skews. One of the most confusing things about skews is that there are two bevels, which leads to even further confusion. Because the bevels are ground individually, I always prefer to discuss each individual angle. Others talk about ‘included angles’, which is both angles added together, so my tool has bevel angles of 22° and so an included angle of 44°. Other turners take theirs back as far as 15° on each face (30° included angle). I have a round skew that I actually use as a negative rake scraper that has 35° on each bevel (70° included angle) and even that works as a skew if presented correctly, so the angle doesn’t matter that much. The main thing to understand is that a longer bevel (lower number like 15°) will produce lovely curly shavings when used in a planing cut, but will be more difficult to use for the shaping cuts like rolling beads. Interestingly, many old books refer to the length of the bevel being 1.5 times or sometimes 2 times the thickness of the tool, rather than a specific angle. In this case, those would have been fairly long angles, more like 12 or 15 degrees on each face.
I have experimented over the years and had settled on an angle that I liked best, giving the best balance between ease of use and clean cuts and, when it came to having my Signature tool produced, I was asked what angle I preferred. It was only then that I measured it, which is why I use such an oddly specific angle. Honestly, if you took it a degree or two in either direction you probably wouldn’t notice much difference, but when I tried it at closer to 15° I found I got more catches than I have for a very long time. So once again, personal preference, but for me 22° works very well.
Grinding vs honing
I’m still not done with sharpening I’m afraid. Let’s assume you have the profile you like best on your skew – should you then hone it with a diamond hone or slip stone before using it on the lathe? Many people will tell you it is absolutely vital that you do, most production turners I know don’t bother and use the tool straight from the grinder, including myself. Once again, I have experimented and will very occasionally use a diamond hone if I need a super-sharp edge to deal with a difficult piece of wood, but this is very rare. There is no doubt that, having honed the skew, it will be sharper, the question is whether or not it needs to be sharper? I use a 180 grit CBN on a slow-running grinder and find the edge it produces is more than sharp enough for my spindle turning, but if you feel it works better with a honed edge, then go for it.
Technically, there is a distinction between grinding, sharpening and honing, but this really applies to plane irons and hand chisels for flat work where the primary bevel is ground, a secondary bevel is sharpened on a series of stones and then honed or stropped on a leather strop. For turning tools, the sharpening device is a grinder, so the terms grinding and sharpening are more interchangeable. But to sharpen you only need to clean the bevel up to the cutting edge, that’s it. It should take seconds rather than minutes and once the bevel is shiny and free from wood residue, you’re good to go. Of all turning tools, I would argue that the skew is the one that is most important to keep sharp. This is because most tools will still work when they are somewhat less than sharp, but a skew that is less than sharp will be more likely to catch, so if in any doubt about the sharpness of your skew, sharpen it.
Sharpening on the grinder
The good news about sharpening a skew is that it is one of the easier tools to sharpen. I use an adjustable platform set in front of my grinder. The 180 grit CBN is optional. For years I used a 120 grit white wheel that worked just fine, the upgrade came about purely because I wore it down and it needed replacing. The advantage of CBN is that it remains a constant diameter, so I made myself some simple templates to help with the repeatability of my platform settings. Once you set the position of your platform it is just a case of sitting the tool on the platform and cleaning the bevel.
Round and oval skews are a little more difficult because they don’t sit flat on the platform and tend to want to rock. It is important to have a light touch and feel for the bevel on the wheel, once the bevel sits on the wheel you can sharpen as normal but it takes a bit of practice to get that feel. So while round and oval skews are often promoted as easier to use at the lathe, they can be a little trickier to sharpen cleanly.
Toolrest maintenance
An area often ignored is the toolrest. It is very important to keep it clean and smooth so the tool will slide over it with ease. I didn’t like the original Wadkin toolrest that came on my lathe so bought a set of Robust rests some years ago which have a profile that I am much happier with. They have a hardened steel rod along the top which doesn’t dent like some rests I’ve used, but does get dirty, either from the wood or sometimes just with a residue of steel rubbing on steel, so I regularly wipe over with fine abrasive and a carnauba wax stick to keep them in tip-top condition.
On my first demonstrating trip to the US, I was given a brand new Powermatic lathe to use and every surface except the lathe bed had a thick coat of yellow paint on it, including the toolrest. Shortly into my first demo (bearing in mind I was there as a spindle turning/ skew expert) I got a skew catch. It took a while to work out exactly why I got the catch, but I soon realised it was linked to the paint on the rest. After that first demo I took a file to it and polished it up and didn’t get another catch over the whole weekend. I always carry a file in my tool bag to demos so I can tidy up the toolrests before a demo.
Most old skews had very sharp square edges but many modern tools come with their leading edges rounded somewhat to help with the tool sliding along the rest. Gary Rance developed his Signature round skew because the turning factory he worked in when he first started had wooden toolrests that were always dented so his round skew slid along the wooden rests much better.
Catches
This naturally leads me on to catches. Skew catches are by far the most dramatic of all the catches you will get when turning. I always say that the skew is a bit of a drama queen and will let you know, in no uncertain terms, if you are using it properly or not. I will discuss the catches that are associated with each different cut in more detail as I get to them in the next couple of articles, but I can speak in more general terms here. I wrote an article about catches several years ago and the overriding conclusion I reached was that, while the main reason for catches is poor presentation and not using the bevel correctly, one of the less understood reasons for catches is in the head of the turner and is linked to confidence and belief. During the photo shoot for that article, I was sticking tools into spinning wood at angles that should definitely have resulted in a catch and more often than not, I struggled to force a catch to happen. It was only when I really didn’t want to get a catch that I got one. In production, I can go days without a catch but once the thought enters my head ‘it’s been a while since I had a catch…’ there is often one just around the corner.
I’m sure you will have experienced this yourself, perhaps on a project you are very pleased with, you stand back and take a look and decide it needs one more cut to perfect a curve. The thought that naturally enters your head next is ‘I’d better be careful though because I’d hate to get a catch now and spoil all my hard work…’ At this point, almost unconsciously, you will feel a tension across your shoulders, you might grip the tool slightly more firmly than you were before and BANG! It’s not that you temporarily lost the ability to turn, but your brain essentially screwed you over. You see it all the time in sport – any football fan watching an England penalty shoot-out will have seen it regularly, a batter in cricket approaching 100 runs in the test match… the examples are endless and it’s not that these international sportsmen lose the ability to do their chosen sport, but their brain screws them over, and they mess it up. The best advice I can give is to relax and turn almost as if you don’t care, everything works better when you are relaxed and enjoying yourself rather than stressed and piling pressure on yourself.
Next article – I will introduce peeling and planing and give a set of exercises to help you to achieve these cuts, starting with planing straight surfaces and building to tapers and eventually long flowing curves with your favourite skew.
PHOTOGRAPHY BY RICHARD FINDLEY
One Response
Love the articles! Very helpful. I would offer that most turners troubles often happen while entering or exiting a cut. If somewhere along the line you can address this, I’d appreciate it. Thanks!