Just For Turners (and future turners)

[William Young]

AH ! ! , the lonely scraper .
Sometimes set aside as a forbidden tool .
I have read in a few turning sites where some turners scorn the use of a scraper and talk as if using a scraper puts you into a very beginners category . They talk about their special gouges and if you can't use a skew you are not yet a good turner . To all that I say hogwash . Although I have mastered the use of a skew and my deep bowl gouge and roughing gouge and only get a catch once in a blue moon , I put this 12" block of wood on the lathe this afternoon to try an experiment with the scraper.
The only part I used the roughing gouge for was to clean off the bark and true up the piece of wood . Then instead of normally using my deep bowl gouge I used a scraper to clean out and shape all of the inside and all of the outside. Why did I do this ? ? . . . just to prove a point about what some say about scrapers and also , , just because I could . . . .
The long curly shavings to the right are from hogging it out using slight pressure to cut.
The finer ones closer to the bowl are from using a lighter touch. After getting to that point I touched up the scraper on the grinder and got very fine shavings like frog hair and a remarkably smooth surface for using nothing but a scraper. .
This bowl was just rough turned from juicy green wood at this point and it is now in denatured alcohol for 24 hours and then will be taken out and wrapped and be dry for final turning in a few weeks.

[PuzzledMoose]

I'm glad I'm not the only one who likes scrapers ... I've never actually tried hollowing a whole bowl with one though ..

I'm wondering how you would finish of the inside of small 2'" diameter boxes, where the bottom is at right angles to the sides without using a scraper .. I have a box scraper .. blade not a lot bigger than a medium sized screwdriver that is great for getting right into the corner ..

There are actually quite a few well-known turners who acknowledge the usefulness of scrapers - Richard Raffan for one ..

[William Young]

I'm wondering how you would finish of the inside of small 2'" diameter boxes, where the bottom is at right angles to the sides without using a scraper ..

.
You are right Ian , there are places where a small square end scraper is definitely the best way to go. For the bottom of those small lathe turned boxes you can even use an ordinary wood chisel which most every woodworker already has.
I used a one inch round nose scraper to hollow out and shape that bowl.
W.Y.

[bearfretworks]

Gotta love green wood, just about anything will work!

[William Young]

Yes Barry, I agree about the joys of turning green wood. It keeps your tools nice and cool instead of heating up like when doing large turnings with dry wood . Quite often using a scraper will give you torn or lifted grain when using it for hollowing out bowls but as you know as a turner , the secret is in proper sharpening and knowing how to present the tool to the wood.
My main point in sharing this was to demonstrate that expensive *special purpose* tools are not necessarily required to achieve the same results in a lot of cases. .
Heck, my home made Oland tool that I made just recently and cost very little will hollow out a bowl even faster than a scraper although not as smoothly but following up with a sharp scraper will even it out and make it smooth.
I probably would not have bought my expensive fingernail grind Robert Sorby deep bowl gouge a few years ago and the special jig for sharpening it if I had known that the job could be done just as easily with tools that cost a fraction of the price.

Gotta love the frog hair shavings that are produced with a real sharp tool. :big grin_old:
W.Y.