Last month we looked at peeling cuts and planing cuts with the skew chisel. Hopefully, you have converted at least a couple of those lengths of softwood into shavings perfecting these cuts. If you are feeling comfortable with the cuts in the exercises last month, then you are ready to move on to the next set of practice exercises. This month we’ll be focusing on slicing cuts where the tip of the tool is used, rather than the cuts from last month where the edge of the tool was used. The difference is subtle but clear and it will become clearer as you work through the
exercises.
V-grooves. Exercise 1
The first exercise is to cut V-grooves. On the face of it, these are very simple and once you can cut them with confidence, the following cuts in the article will be much easier. The main thing to understand in turning in general and in V-cuts in particular, is that you never just push, poke, prod or jab a tool at the spinning wood – this is a recipe for disaster. Instead, it is important to slice into the work by lifting the handle while pushing forward. In all areas of turning, there is a certain amount of ‘feel’ that you develop as your skills increase. If your reaction to a cut not going quite to plan is to hold the tool more firmly and push harder, you may struggle with some of these exercises. You shouldn’t ever have to bully your way through the wood – by slicing the wood will just peel away from the tool, especially this good-quality pine and your lovely sharp skew. (I shouldn’t need to remind you by now that your skew needs to be sharp and if you worked through all of the previous exercises and still haven’t sharpened it, you might want to touch it up before moving on to this new set.)
Using the same 200mm-long softwood blanks that you cut from the DIY store pine, mount the first between centres, turn it to a cylinder and take a planing cut to make it smooth. Draw a pencil line roughly in the centre and, using the long point of your skew, incise a line on the pencil line. Technically, there is no need for the pencil line but it tests your aim with the tool – did you hit it exactly on the line? Move the tool a few millimetres to one side of the incision and, tilting the tool so the long point is aiming toward the centre of the imagined V that we’re going to cut, begin to cut. The handle should start low and your back hand should lift it as you gently but firmly push forward. You should begin to form one side of the V, now repeat on the other side of the incision, tilting the skew the other way and once again lift and push, slicing into the wood and producing the other side of the V. This will only create a small V, so repeat the process to enlarge it a little more, alternating the cuts from one side and then the other. Your first V-groove is likely to be wonky, with one side being more or less angled than the other. You can take another cut each side to try to even things up a bit. These cuts are light initially. If you take too big a cut, the tool will bind and you won’t be able to complete the cut. As your confidence and skill level increases, you will be able to take larger, more aggressive cuts successfully, but in these early stages keep the cuts light as they will be much more controllable.
With your first V-cut complete, move 20mm or so along the timber and try another. You can completely fill this piece of wood with V-cuts, some wide-open Vs, others tighter, more steep-sided Vs. The aim here is to have control of the tool and to be able to make the V-shape that you aimed for and keep both sides with similar, if not exactly the same angles.
If you get a catch as you enter the wood the reason will be either that you need to sharpen your tool or you just pushed straight in without lifting the handle. The Vs shouldn’t be deep enough to get a catch during the cut.
Slicing end grain. Exercise 2
Prepare another blank as before, roughing to a cylinder and planing it smooth. Mark a line around 20mm from the end of the blank and make a peeling cut, sizing a tenon to around 25mm with your callipers. I have done this at the tailstock end of the blank in the photos but you can do it at both ends as it is important to be able to work both ways.
Stop the lathe and notice how torn the end grain is where you made the peeling cut. This needs tidying up and the skew is the perfect tool to do it. The cut is like the V-cut you just did, but this time the bevel needs to aim straight down the shoulder you just formed with the peeling cut. This will mean the tool handle is held at what feels like an odd angle, but in all forms of turning the bevel points in the direction of the cut. You need to tilt the tool slightly away from the surface you’re cutting too, otherwise the edge will catch. In all of these cuts we are just using the tip of the tool. Picture 6 shows the cut in action and hopefully clarifies my explanation.
You might find that you didn’t get the shoulder entirely straight, with it leaning slightly a little like the V-cut, in this case adjust yourself and cut again. The cut should be smooth and positive using that slicing action of lifting and pushing forward. Once you are happy with the shape – i.e. you cut it square, stop the lathe, and look at the surface from the tool – it should be much cleaner than before. If there are lines on it from the tool try again, keeping your action smooth and without putting any sideward pressure on the tool and into the end grain. Any pressure into the end grain will compress the fibres and mark the wood. Take another peeling cut and repeat the exercise until you can consistently produce straight and clean shoulders at both ends of the blank.
Developing a curve. Exercise 3
Assuming you turned that last blank to shavings perfecting the cut, prepare another. As before, use a peeling cut and callipers to form a tenon at each end around 20mm long and 25mm in diameter. Take a slicing cut straight down the end grain to clean it up and leave it square.
At the top of the shoulder, remove the corner as if cutting one side of a V-groove, forming a small chamfer above the tenon. Repeat the last cut, as if increasing the size of the V-cut, only this time gently roll the tool slightly in the direction of travel as you cut. Remember you are only using the long point of the tool. You should find that your square shoulder now has a slight curve to it. Repeat the cut and try to increase the curve. As long as you are slicing using the very tip of the tool, you will feel completely in control of the cut, the surface will be clean and you should form a curve like the one shown in picture 9. As you can see, you have formed the beginnings, or perhaps the majority of, a bead, so repeat this a few more times at both ends of the blank until you are comfortable with the cut, perhaps try to increase the amount of curve that you produce. Remember to keep the cut on the tip of the tool.
Why so focused on using the tip?
The simple answer is control. Using the tip of the tool for these cuts slices cleanly through the wood (as long as it’s sharp) and gives you complete control over the tool. You can see that you are using the tip of the tool when it raises a feathered edge in front of the cut as in picture 10.
It is possible to turn a bead using the edge of the tool rather than the tip but – and it’s a big but – you have to get the tool presentation absolutely perfect with the bevel rubbing behind the cut throughout, otherwise a catch is certain. By cutting on the tip of the tool, the bevel naturally falls into place behind the cut so you have far better control throughout the cut with a far lower chance of a catch. Most catches happen because of a loss of bevel contact. The only downside of cutting with the tip of the tool is that you will need to sharpen more frequently as all that use is hard on the tip and it needs to be sharp or – guess what? – catches.
My friend and well-known production turner Steve Jones (woodturner21 on YouTube) generally uses the planing cut to form beads rather than the tip of his skew. He makes it look incredibly easy and you won’t find a faster or more efficient spindle turner than Steve, so using the edge is arguably faster than slicing with the tip, but it takes a huge amount of practice (and catches) to perfect the technique, so I would highly recommend using the tip of the skew for rolling beads. Try both methods and see how you get on.
Rolling beads. Exercise 4
Having turned yet another blank to shavings, prepare another. Mark pencil lines around 25mm apart and make a series of V-grooves on the lines, giving you space to cut your beads into. You can put a pencil line in the centre of each section to help balance the shape of your beads.
When rolling beads, you can use either the long or the short point of your skew. I would recommend, if your skew is somewhat straighter than a factory grind as I suggested in Part 1, that you use the long point as it gives better visibility through the cut. The straighter the angle of skew, the more the two points behave the same in the cut. If you have a very skewed skew chisel, the short point gives a more positive bevel contact but far less visibility. Try both and see which works best for you. Either way, make sure you are cutting on the very tip of the tool.
Exercise 3 formed the majority of the bead, you just need to get the full rotation of the tool to complete it. One tip that can help here is with the position of the back hand. All of the tool movement comes from the back hand, your front hand is there just for stability, and to reduce chatter; it should not be controlling the tool in any way. The problem is, if you hold the tool in a natural comfortable position at the beginning of the cut, your wrist doesn’t have the range of movement to complete it, so a slight adjustment before starting makes a huge difference. As a left-hander, when I roll to the left, I start with my hand slightly on top of the tool handle; when I roll to the right, I start with my hand slightly under the handle (reverse if right handed), and this gives me the range of movement to roll the tool completely around the bead.
It is quite normal to feel more comfortable turning one side of the bead, the other often feels unnatural to begin with. So, when turning a row of beads you can either turn all of one side and then the other, or form each bead completely before moving on. The choice is entirely yours. The skew should start almost flat on the top of the bead. Pick up the cut on the tip of the skew and move the tool sidewards while rolling it. There will be a slight lift of the handle required too, depending on how high you position your toolrest. Your first will probably take several cuts on each side to complete, but as you grow in confidence you will be able to achieve a better shape with fewer cuts. Turn this blank into shavings and beads and repeat until you feel comfortable with rolling beads.
But I’m still getting catches!
If you’ve worked through the exercises, kept your tool sharp and are cutting on the very tip of the tool, you shouldn’t be getting many catches now. Everyone gets the odd one and they are just as annoying/frustrating/unexpected/alarming (insert your own adjective here) when you’ve been turning for many years as they are when you start out, they just happen a lot less often.
When catches happen there are usually two reasons: you have lost bevel support or the tool is blunt. The second is easy to remedy. Loss of bevel support is harder to pin down. If you are using the tip of the tool and the bevel is in good contact, as long as you keep moving forward and rolling in a positive manner they are quite unlikely. ‘Fishing’ is a prime cause of catches. Sometimes, as you move through the cut, you lose the cut from the tip. If this happens you should stop, move back a little and start again – do not fish around for the cut, trying to pick it back up. If you do you will almost always get a catch. By fishing you are trying to find the cut again and you’ll move forward and backward trying to pick it up on the tip of the tool, but you are more likely to lose bevel contact and get a catch, so if you lose the cut, stop, bring the tool back to the start and go again, maintaining your smooth forward motion.
Combination cuts. Exercise 5
While the focus of this article is on slicing with the tip of your skew, occasionally you’ll need to combine a planing cut with a slicing cut, especially in the case of long, sweeping curves. Last month I looked at turning long, sweeping, hollow curves, but long, stretched-out, positive curves are very similar. Mark out a blank as per last month, turned to a cylinder and planed smooth, size a 20mm tenon on each end and mark a centreline with a pencil. Beginning with a planing cut as last month, take a planing cut in your natural direction, by gently lifting the handle and rolling slightly you will begin to form the curve. This is quite a gentle curve so very controllable with a planing cut throughout, but if it were steeper you would find it difficult to control the cut at the ends of the curve, in which case you need to engage the tip of the tool by rolling a very small amount toward the leading tip of the tool. You’ll know it has engaged when the feathered edge rises up in front of the cut. Using this combination technique will also allow you to cut cleanly up to tenons, shoulders or beads without over cutting and leaving an unsightly groove which needs to be dealt with later.
Pommels. Exercise 6
The final exercise may appear to be the most daunting, cutting into a square bit of wood with a skew, but if you have worked through the exercises so far, this will be easy. Put a new blank between centres and, with a square, mark a line across the blank about three-quarters of the way along. The shorter section is the waste. Fire up the lathe and you will be able to see the line you marked quite clearly, even though you only did it on one face. Use the long point and slice into the waste, 10mm or so away from the line, just like you would forming a V-cut, slicing towards the waste, away from the line. Stop the lathe and take a look – notice the side nearest the line is clean and any breakout is on the waste side. This is good. Start up the lathe again and repeat the V-cut, working back towards the line, straightening the cut a little each time, with your final cut being straight down the line as in Exercise 2. At this size you should barely notice that the wood is square and the shoulder should be crisp and clean. If not, draw a new line 5-10mm back from the previous line and try again. Remember to only use the tip, aim the bevel in the direction of cut, tip the tool ever so slightly away from the shoulder and slice forward in a smooth positive manner (I appreciate that’s a lot to remember) and you should have it.
Once you can cut a square shoulder, stop the lathe, draw a line 10mm back from the shoulder and form a curved cut as in Exercise 3 and you will have a curved shoulder on your pommel.
Conclusion
We have covered the basic cuts with the skew: peeling, planing and slicing. The exercises in the series so far will hopefully give you confidence with your skew chisel and, if you’ve followed along through the exercises, the tool should be beginning to feel like a friend rather than a wild animal that could attack you at any moment. Next month I will begin the first of several skew chisel projects that will put all of these practice exercises into practical use to achieve some useful and beautiful projects, starting quite straightforward and building to more challenging designs, all with your skew chisel.
PHOTOGRAPHY BY RICHARD FINDLEY