Learning the Turning

"A Bit of A Catch"

Catches aren't quite so scary once you discover you tend to do more damage to the blank than you do to yourself.  This happened when I was turning the largest bowl to date, a fairly massive chunk of blackwood with (as I discovered) a nice hidden knot.  Knowing what a knot is (it's just a a piece of branch) I wonder how it managed to embed itself.  I'll leave that speculation for another day, I suppose.

Anyway, this big Blackwood blank was spinning fairly fast for its size -- around 1000rpm -- and was actually moving the lathe around on the floor, and that was after I'd gotten it roughly cylindrical.  I'd gone to a square high-speed steel scraper, and the knot decided it really liked the scraper and wanted to eat it, which it did.

The blank came to a noisy dead stop, stalled the lathe, and I slapped the off switch.  The tool rest looked a little wonky, and I blew the dust off and found I wasn't going to be doing any more turning today.  Off to speak to the spares guy at Carbatec, then.