How To Use A Wood Lathe Gouge

Scrapers are used to remove the marks left by your bowl gouge.

How to use a wood lathe gouge. A woodturning scraper scrapes using a burr so it should be kept very sharp to work well. The tool meets the wood just below the centerline of the blank and you hold it at a downward angle the tool is lower than the handle. An angle finder would be a good investment so that you can verify the angles to be sharpened.

So here is me us. They are square not round. A roughing gouge has a tang which isnt designed to take as much downward pressure as a rod.

As you use your roughing gouge to turn it round you start by hitting each of the 4 edges and slowly work your way down to a round turning blank. Rest your little finger and the back of your palm on the tool rest located in the center of your wood lathe machine. Mainly used to turn the spindles which involve stocks longer than its width and is placed in the lathe parallel to the lathes turning axis.

In fact chairmaker David Douyard uses the roughing gouge 95 of the time when he is turning. Many of his ladderback and Windsor chair spindles can be shaped from beginning to end with the roughing gouge. During these straight cuts look closely at the tip of the bowl gouge.

Do not use any other types of screws than wood screws. Observe how much material is coming off the tip. The lathe tool rest needs to be positioned relatively close to the wood bowl blank to give yourself a leverage advantage with the bowl gouge handle.

Rotate the bowl gouge to the side slightly so the side of the cutting edge engages the wood. A bowl gouge is often confused with a roughing gouge. Roughing gouges turn stock from the usual square shape to round shape while the spindle gauge creates coves even beads as well as other details.