How Turning Tools Work (Pt. 2) - Bowl Turning

In my very recent blog post about turning between spindles I noted that you are simply peeling away wood perpendicular to the grain. Bowl turning presents a different challenge: as the work turns, the grain of the wood is presented parallel to a the tool and constantly changing direction. This makes the wood splinter out half the time (see picture above). You can easily find instruction on YouTube to help you develop techniques to avoid this problem. But I couldn't find a single source that explained why the techniques work. For woodworkers like me, learning sticks much better when I understand the "why" and not just the "how."In the previous post I noted that you will want to ride the bevel if you want a smooth cut. This is also true in bowl turning, but the first step is making a square wood block round. So I don't have a bevel to ride on. My initial steps in bowl turning are rounding the stock and shaping the outside of the bowl. With no bevel to ride, I can control the cut through…

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