“I wish my seventh grade shop teacher had said to me, ‘I’m teaching you the scraping method because you’re a beginner, but someday when you get serious about woodturning you’ll learn the cutting method.’ If he had done so, I would have realized from the start that he was sending me down the wrong path.”
“By far the most powerful shape used in woodturning is the reverse curve, or S-curve, because it is a combination of both convex and concave. This is sometimes referred to as the ‘vase form’.”
“Why are there so many types of chisels? Which ones do you really need? …The difference between a bowl gouge and a spindle gouge is the shape and depth of the flute. The flute of a spindle gouge is circular and shallow, while the flute of a bowl gouge is parabolic and deeper.”
"Woodturning chisels are subjected to more wear and tear than any other kind of hand held chisels used in woodworking. Because the wood is passing the chisel at 20 miles per hour for prolonged periods of time, a turning chisel will traverse more wood in a few minutes than any carving chisel could in years..."
“A sharp edge, no matter how painstakingly achieved, is only temporary. In Part 2, I will now discuss how to maintain the perfect edge. This operation assumes that the correct geometry has previously been achieved, and we aim to keep it that way as we sharpen the chisel hundreds or even thousands of times.”
“Dutch foot legs were popular in the Queen Anne period. They were also called club foot, pad foot, spoon foot, or even (incorrectly I think) cabriole legs. The Dutch foot legs described here are produced entirely on the lathe requiring no band saw work prior to and no hand work after the turning.”
