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Parting tool and side grain bowls

Alan Weinberg

Alan Weinberg

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Feb 18, 2023
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I was watching Kent on “Turnawoodbowl” on YouTube, a segment on what tools not to use when turning bowls. I understand spindle gouges (except for fine detail work) and roughing gouges with a weak tang, but he included parting tools—said never to use on a bowl. What the heck is it used for the —just spindle work? I’m confused.
 
Alan Weinberg said:
I was watching Kent on “Turnawoodbowl” on YouTube, a segment on what tools not to use when turning bowls. I understand spindle gouges (except for fine detail work) and roughing gouges with a weak tang, but he included parting tools—said never to use on a bowl. What the heck is it used for the —just spindle work? I’m confused.
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You can find many better videos to watch. Maybe he is better now.
Our club safety officer showed one of his videos in a lesson on things not to do
.
The parting tool is for spindle work. Mostly used to size the diameters of various elements on the spindle.

The issue on bowls - if you do a typical peeling cut the point can bury itself in the endgrain when it comes around.

Using it as a scraper level or point down is relatively safe on bowls if you make a relief cut so it doesn’t bind.
Typically it is a lot of tearout.

That said lots of folks use parting tools to size tenons. The point can be sharpened at an angle to match the dovetail angle of chuck jaws.
I prefer a spindle gouge for tenons
 
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One example of using a parting tool on face grain mounted wood

In Johannes Michelson class last century, when we were doing a hat, we used a parting tool to cut the wood above the rim and around the crown free from the hat to use for a mirror frame. This was a ring 3-4” thick and 3-4” high cut with a parting tool.
One cut into the face grain, one cut into the side grain/endgrain.
Keep a diamond part in tool level and cut a relief of 1/2 the tool width and it works.
Need a wider relief cutting into the face grain to make top and bottom clearances.
 
I think that fixed rules are not a good friend of the woodturner, once you understand how tools cut you can bend most of the rules.Richard Raffan turns the outside of his bowls using spindle gouges. Normal parting tools and bedans are like negative rake scrapers...I do not feel a need for them in bowl turning but I cannot see anything bad or unsafe about using them.
 
Bill Blasic said:
When teaching new students I always show them that if they have trouble with the cut where you enter the bowl (skating) that you can use the parting tool straight in to give you a little shelf where you can pick up the cut to prevent skating.
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In my bowl classes I teach 3 tools - bowl gouge, spindle gouge, and round nose scraper.

I have used that parting tool technique on rare occasions teaching NE bowls.
I have had a few students over the years use the parting tool to make the shelf if their motor skills prevented them from making a nice entry cut on the uneven surface. But the vast majority don’t need the parting tool.

Students get get quite competent with the entry hollowing cut on cut rim bowls by repeating it 25+ times as they cut from the center out with each 1/4” cut creating a successively larger bowl.
By concentrating on tool position and a slow entry feed rate the students tend to get it.
 
Well, 2 uses for a parting tool on bowls would be forming a tenon, and the first 'coring' tools were straight parting tools. Other than that, I have other tools that will do those jobs better. Hmm, perhaps the comment about 'first coring' tools might be wrong. Saw Robin Wood, spring pole lathe expert, and he had forged his own curved tools for removing bowl shaped cores. Some people do use a parting tool to start the final cut on the inside of the bowl at the rim. They haven't figured out how to make that entry cut without the gouge skating.

robo hippy
 
Tom Gall said:
Dennis Stewart used to sell a tool like that ... maybe it was based on Rude's tool.
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It was called a slicer and was used with his arm brace handle, the tip is about 3/16th inch wide, carbide tipped with a concave grind similar to a beading tool.
If you don't believe me I can go out and photograph it mounted in the arm brace handle.
 
Don Wattenhofer said:
It was called a slicer and was used with his arm brace handle, the tip is about 3/16th inch wide, carbide tipped with a concave grind similar to a beading tool.
If you don't believe me I can go out and photograph it mounted in the arm brace handle.
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Why wouldn't I believe you? I have the DS Hooker tool with cutting tips that I bought 24 years ago with the arm brace handle. I passed on the slicer tool.
 
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