Making your tools slide and glide on the tool rest........

[Ian Robertson]

For similar effect, I sometimes reach over the rest and curl my fingers around the top and back of spindle with my palm planted on the rest while my thumb guides and pushes the gouge. Others do this as well, especially with skews.

My method as well on fine stuff.

 

[MichaelMouse]

To say that he overhand grip is the be all and end all and offers better control is utter rot.

Which is why I didn't say it. I said that it was the answer for tool control that prevented having to resurface the rest, regardless its composition.

It is also true that, in addition to brute leverage, use of an overhand grip - the ONLY way to ensure a secure fulcrum - makes small adjustments in yaw and pitch at the cutting end possible with greater precision. Mechanical advantage. As I said, moving the tool a mm upward in pitch can be easily accomplished using the fulcrum and moving the handle an inch. Can you imagine a half mm movement being accomplished, much less secured by the fingers? Can't be done, save by accident, and can't be held against the thrust of the wood if accidentally made. Yet it is easy by moving the handle a half inch versus a full with the mechanical advantage assumed above. Yaw motion is the same. Longer arm makes adjustment at the business end of a degree or two, one that the fingers would not even be able to sense.

Don't really care what you say, nor whose aura you invoke, because it is a matter of physiology that the fingers are incapable of holding the tool to the rest tightly enough to make a useful fulcrum. Further, the use of opposing hand grips for stabilization and precision is one well known to carvers of static wood, and therefore most useful for those carving moving wood as well. The hand that forms the ANCHOR in the A-B-C also gives the opposite something to work against to stabilize and direct the tool.

You might actually get a mechanical disadvantage if you try to adjust the nose of a tool hanging an inch over the rest with fingers being used as a depth gauge. You'd be on the wrong end of that lever. The wood might even rattle it on the rest.

 

[MichaelMouse]

Dean,

The rests and the hand position is particularly useful for those who do very delicate and tiny finial work. They use their fingers to steady the wood while cutting.

Works well, I might add, though when employing the technique I find a wrap of hypoallergenic fabric bandaging, or even masking tape with its low-friction surface between first and second knuckles allows firmer support and protects against an unanticipated splinter when tipping into rising grain. Almost impossible to get a useful mechanical steady in short sections without interfering with free tool movement on some spindle work.

I don't use the finger tips. I want them in free air.

 

[john lucas]

I bought my robust slim profile rest for just that reason. I wrap my fingers around it to steady my mirror handles and ornament finials. Of course the lighter you are on the bevel of the tool the less you have to push with your fingers.

 

[Odie]

If anyone is interested in one of these polishing and deburring wheels for their turning tools and tool rests, I see they are being offered by the Beall tool company at a decent price.

ooc


Click the link:
http://www.bealltool.com/products/buffing/polishwheel.php




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[Thomas Heck]

Thanks for all the info. Very informative and helpful.