# Turning Bowls



## David J. Krease (Sep 17, 2011)

I have been turning bowls for 8 years but have recently experienced difficulty in that I find it very difficult to finish the inside of a 15" bowl. I find that my skew wants to bit into the wood and rip it out. This happens only on the inside (near the outside edge). My tool starts to chatter and then it rips the wood for about 4 inches. This in on the end grain. I have a Vic Mark lathe, turning at about 1900 rpm, the wood is American Elm. This is the largest bowl I have turned. I would love to resolve this problem. Would this happen because my tools are not sharp enough?? Please help me. 

Dave Krease


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## BernieW (Sep 12, 2006)

David I guess my first question I would ask why you are using a skew to turn a bowl?? I have never used a skew on a bowl in all my years of turning. I use a bowl gouge and sometimes a bowl scraper. I use a couple of different gouges. One has a irish grind on it and use it to shape the outside and then hog out the inside of the bowl. I then resharpen it and use it to shear scrap the outside and inside. Most times I can start sanding at 150 grit or higher. The other is a conventional grind gouge made by P & N. 

It would help to see a picture of how you present the skew on the exterior and interior of a bowl. I have attended a lot of demo's at symposiums, a couple of schools I attended and DVD's I have watched but no one used a skew to do a bowl. A excellent DVD on bowl turning is Bill Grumbines "Turned Bowls Made Easy". 

I am sorry and don't mean to offend you but it just took me by surprise to read about using a skew. I could see shear scrapeing using the skew as a negative rake scraper on the outside but not on the inside. 

Now another problem that can cause your chatter is that the bowl has practically no support up near the lip and believe it or not at 1900 rpm the lip is probably moving when you apply even the lightest pressure. I use a bowl steady from Oneway that has soft wheels that run against the upper outside edge of the bowl. This cuts down on the chatter and give support. It pretty much kinda of stabilizes the upper part of the bowl. I will then at that point sharpen my gouge and if I have some tear out will put some shellac on it then take a couple of final cuts which most time will take care of the tear out. Then I start power sanding at around 150 grit and follow every grit to around 320. 

Hope this helps.


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## AlanZ (Aug 21, 2008)

Bernie,

You echo my thoughts exactly.


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