+1. Shear scraping yields a better surface both on the inside and outside of a bowl.
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finish scraping
- Thread starter Kevin Jenness
- Start date
I stopped trying to shear scrape inside bowls with an Ellsworth grind. It doesn't work. Do you mean with a scraper?
Yes, shear scraping with a round nose scraper on the inside of the bowl and with a square end scraper reground into a refiner on the outside of the bowl.
I have seen a number of turners who use a swept back grind on the inside of a bowl with the handle held level. That is NOT a shear scrape, which to me means held at an angle. At best, that use of a swept back gouge would be more of a NRS than any kind of shear scrape. I do have one video dedicated to that topic.
robo hippy
robo hippy
I'm one of those that has done a lot of my own testing of the different woodturning tool steels and can say with some confidence that tool performance can depend partly on what it is being used for. With heavy push cuts in very hard wood I found little difference between V10 and 15V....
But M42 did just a little less well on the same test runs...
So, it is not a s simple as this steel is better than that steel. In most non-production workshops there will be very little difference noticed by most turners between these steels. If you want a quantum improvement you have to go to very fine-grained TC and the diamond grinding required with that.
I'm a little less cynical than Bill about pro-turner's recommendations, they have to make a living, but I always reserve my opinions until I've done my own testing. I've lived through all of the hype over the decades with each successive new development in tool steel and I ignore almost everything that retailers 'spruke'.
I think it is Cindy Drosda who says, 'we are just one tool away from turning greatness'. In my time basic HSS was the most significant development in turning tool steels and turning greatness has been achieved with just that by many of the great turners. IMO, the newer super steels are nice to have, but in no way essential to great turning. I believe that @Odie on this forum only uses vanilla HSS tools and it certainly hasn't prevented him from doing some excellent work.
Yes, this is true Neil......
Quite a few turners swear by the exotic steels, and I believe they absolutely do hold an edge longer........But.......I also believe that many turners spend way too much time, money, and effort to attain an edge that will last longer.
The whole point in bowl turning is to have the sharpest edge possible from the first cut to the last cut, and that is just as possible with the "vanilla" M2 steels that I use. I will concur that the M2 steels will dull a little faster than the exotic steels.......but, re-sharping to a keen edge is so quick and easy (only seconds of time, as a matter of fact), that the exotic steels just don't make a lot of sense to me.
Besides that, when I use my exotic steels, I tend to use an edge that could benefit from re-sharpening a little longer than I should. A tool that is only slightly dulled will still cut, and the difference between it and a freshly sharpened edge is not that noticeable.....until it's time to start sanding......then the difference is a little more obvious.
A turning tool that dulls faster is a benefit to establishing a finely tooled surface........why?........because the difference between M2 steel and the dulling rate of an exotic steel tool is much more clearly defined. Because of that, there is much less "guesswork" in knowing exactly when it's time to resharpen.
In my opinion, there are benefits to the exotic steels, but there are big and unfortunate trade-offs to use them......specifically because they tend to keep a turner turning longer than they should, when re-sharpening is what's called for.
=o=
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I've never had luck trying to sheer scrape the INSIDE of a bowl with a swept back gouge. Even when I try to tilt the gouge up VERY high, so the sheer angle is fairly extreme, it just doesn't work. I don't know the specific science behind it, but sheer scraping the outside of a bowl or platter, or even the rim of a platter (which IS possible in my experience), is usually working on a flat or convex surface. Something about the concave surface of the inside of a bowl, affects the cut. I always get waves...that bouncing, ridging cut that just ruins the wood.
A proper scraper works fine. An NRS at least in my experience works much better. There are some significant differences between a gouge used even in an extreme sheer angle cut position and a scraper. In no circumstance, does it seem possible to me, to actually have the edge of a gouge at any angle to the wood, where the wood wouldn't want to dig into the gouge. I think that results in a rebound in the wood, which then snaps back, digs onto the gouge edge again, snaps back, etc. etc. Even with a scraper, from a physics standpoint as I understand it, the wood still wants to climb onto the scraper, and you can get that snap back in thewood, which then results in that oscillation. With an NRS, the desire of the wood to climb onto the scraper is lessened, and even if the wood does, it rolls off that negative rake angle much more easily than a flat scraper.
Another thing about a scraper, vs. a swept back gouge...you can present it to the wood in a much more effective manner, regardless of what the inside curvature of the bowl is. With a gouge in a sheer scraping position...well, for one, you are not always able to maintain a sheer orientation because of the bowl rim, and otherwise may not be able to achieve an effective sheer angle. A lot of the time, you end up just aggressively scraping, not sheer scraping... An NRS can be presented strait into the wood, slightly above or below angle, and take very clean fine cuts.
A proper scraper works fine. An NRS at least in my experience works much better. There are some significant differences between a gouge used even in an extreme sheer angle cut position and a scraper. In no circumstance, does it seem possible to me, to actually have the edge of a gouge at any angle to the wood, where the wood wouldn't want to dig into the gouge. I think that results in a rebound in the wood, which then snaps back, digs onto the gouge edge again, snaps back, etc. etc. Even with a scraper, from a physics standpoint as I understand it, the wood still wants to climb onto the scraper, and you can get that snap back in thewood, which then results in that oscillation. With an NRS, the desire of the wood to climb onto the scraper is lessened, and even if the wood does, it rolls off that negative rake angle much more easily than a flat scraper.
Another thing about a scraper, vs. a swept back gouge...you can present it to the wood in a much more effective manner, regardless of what the inside curvature of the bowl is. With a gouge in a sheer scraping position...well, for one, you are not always able to maintain a sheer orientation because of the bowl rim, and otherwise may not be able to achieve an effective sheer angle. A lot of the time, you end up just aggressively scraping, not sheer scraping... An NRS can be presented strait into the wood, slightly above or below angle, and take very clean fine cuts.
The most versatile shear scraper that I have used for inside bowls and forms is the Woodcut Woodcut Pro-Forme Scraper tip.
This one...
It has a round shaft that can be fixed into the Pro-Forme bar and can be rotated to any shear angle and when attached to a bent or swan's neck bar it presents the scraper tip at a shear scraping angle to the inside surface of the wood. The tip can be sharpened to a traditional or negative scraper profile. Woodcut say that it "fits any of the Pro-Forme tools and can be used as a traditional scraper or can be positioned at an angle in a way no other scrapers can. That produces a shear cut inside a vessel and a super smooth surface."
I'm not referring here to the following Woodcut Pro-Forme Flexi Scraper tip that attaches to the bar in a fixed position that is far less versatile for inside scraping...
On more open forms I tend to use a bowl gouges in reverse for scraping inside cuts. For that I use a BG with a 65° bevel and an edge profile like the one on the left below. When the area in the front one third of that edge is used in reverse in more open forms you get a genuine shear scrape. If the lip is undercut the further swept back wing edge engages as you come up through that area of the piece and it then becomes a more regular scraping cut...
This one...
It has a round shaft that can be fixed into the Pro-Forme bar and can be rotated to any shear angle and when attached to a bent or swan's neck bar it presents the scraper tip at a shear scraping angle to the inside surface of the wood. The tip can be sharpened to a traditional or negative scraper profile. Woodcut say that it "fits any of the Pro-Forme tools and can be used as a traditional scraper or can be positioned at an angle in a way no other scrapers can. That produces a shear cut inside a vessel and a super smooth surface."
I'm not referring here to the following Woodcut Pro-Forme Flexi Scraper tip that attaches to the bar in a fixed position that is far less versatile for inside scraping...
On more open forms I tend to use a bowl gouges in reverse for scraping inside cuts. For that I use a BG with a 65° bevel and an edge profile like the one on the left below. When the area in the front one third of that edge is used in reverse in more open forms you get a genuine shear scrape. If the lip is undercut the further swept back wing edge engages as you come up through that area of the piece and it then becomes a more regular scraping cut...
Back in the day I used to make my own shear scraper (NRS) tip tools. Still use them to this day. Clearly, they aren't for everybody.
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This is what your shavings should look like
I like your method of grinding a slot for the screw. My method of drilling a hole through hardened steel with diamond bits is more work.
The slot was an experiment at first to get around drilling. I was doubtful but over the years, I'd had no problems with rocking like I thought might be possible.
Thirty years ago I watched Ray Key cock his scraper up in the air and gently stroke off the finest of shavings. I saw then that it was a technique rather than technology.
A slot is far more convenient than a hole as you don't have to remove the screw to sharpen the blade. I modified a teardrop scraper that came with a hole using a cutoff blade in a Dremel.
It was a joint effort between myself and Neil Strong nad yes we found that the conventional grind lead the wings to chip so changed the angle to give it more strength. But as good as they were they were no match for the hardwoods, so we moved onto carbide