[ Power saw whirring ] [ Mid-tempo music plays ] It's time for another episode of "The Woodsmith Shop."

On today's show, Chris, Logan, and I are going to spend some time right here at the lathe making three different types of projects.

It's a lot of fun, and the projects go by pretty quickly.

It's time to get turning.

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Additional funding provided by... ♪♪ Titebond wood glues -- the pro's advantage.

And by... Kreg -- from the first cut to the final assembly, providing woodworkers with products that help to simplify woodworking challenges.

Kreg.

And by... [ Up-tempo music plays ] ♪♪ ♪♪ [ Mid-tempo music plays ] ♪♪ ♪♪ You know, Chris, usually at this point in the episode, we're talking about a specific project.

Here we're talking about a tool.

And that tool is the lathe.

Lathes are really exciting tools that offer so many different options and so many different accessories.

And what I like about it is that, no matter what you're doing, it seems like the project gets done pretty quickly, whether it's just a few minutes or even a couple hours.

Yeah.

And you can stop and start very easily.

And today, on the show, we're going to be looking at three different types of projects rather than specific ones.

I'm going to be covering some kinds of tool handles.

And I'm going to look at using some basic turning tools and working with some hardware kits to make your own accessories and tools.

And lastly, Logan's going to show us up with a beautiful walnut platter.

So, you can find plans for some of the projects that we're going to show, as well as an article on how to keep your turning tools sharp.

It's all at our website -- WoodsmithShop.com.

Let's start turning.

If you'd like a great small project for your lathe, then I'd like to suggest making a tool handle.

They're easy, and they're very useful.

And there's an unlimited number of different designs and looks that you can achieve.

Now, I'm going to go ahead and turn a simple tool handle that's meant as a replacement for a garden tool I have.

It's a beech handle with a simple profile, and it has this ferrule on the end of it to give it additional strength.

The first step that I'm going to have to go through to make this handle is going to be to turn my square blank into a round of the approximate diameter of this handle.

To do that, I'm going to set my calipers to a little larger than the diameter of the handle.

And I'll proceed to use this roughing gouge to turn the square blank round.

Well, the next step in making our tool handle is going to be to fit the ferrule onto our turning.

The first step in doing that is going to be to mark the length of the neck that we have to create that will fit into the ferrule.

To do that, I'm going to turn the lathe on and, holding my ferrule up to turning, make a pencil mark.

Now that I have that reference point, I'm going to take a parting tool, and I'm going to reduce the diameter of this area to achieve a nice tight fit within the ferrule.

Now, fitting ferrules is important.

If your neck is too large, well, obviously you're going to have a very difficult time driving the handle into it.

But if it's too loose, no amount of epoxy or C.A.

will ever hold it on.

It needs to be just right.

I'm gonna take my calipers and I'm going to set them for the inner diameter of this tubing, plus a little bit more.

So that's going to be my first guide to fitting the ferrule.

Once I have that done, I'm going to need to take my turning blank off the lathe to actually try to fit it into the ferrule.

And it's probably gonna take a couple of times to achieve a fit that I want.

Now, when you take a turning off of a lathe back and forth, It's important that you put it back in the same place and the same spot.

So to make sure that I do, I'm going to take a magic marker and I'm going to make a little mark here up on the shaft of the lathe, and I'm going to make a matching one on my turning, and that way, my turning will always engage the drive spur at the same spot.

So, with that done, I'm now going to go ahead and turn the lathe on and start to reduce the neck to get a good, tight fit into the ferrule.

With the ferrule fitter, it's now time to shape to handle.

the first step in that is that I'm going to mark the final length of my handle with a pencil in the same way that I marked this shoulder for fitting the ferrule.

With that done, I'm going to go ahead and use the parting tool and create a shoulder here for the end of my tool handle.

Then, there are many different tools one could use to shape the handle.

I'm just going to use a ball gouge and perhaps a bit of skew work to achieve a nice, pleasing shape.

When I'm happy with that, I'll give everything a light sanding and then neck down pretty harshly here at this end of the tool handle in preparation for removing it from the lathe.

To sand the tool handle, I stopped the lathe, and I put it in reverse.

By doing that, the sanding dust goes away from me instead of at me, and it's a lot more efficient in removing tool marks.

With the final sanding done, I'm now going to go ahead and neck down a little bit more here at the front of the tool handle in preparation for removing it from the lathe and finishing the job.

One of the best parts about woodworking is being able to surround yourself with the things that you make.

Now, for me, one of those things is the stuff that I use every day.

So, not that long ago, I carved this bowl out of some walnut that I had, and I use it to hold my shaving soap, 'cause these sideburns don't take care of themselves.

So, and then, I also got a shaving brush that belonged to my great-grandfather.

Now, as you can see, it's, uh -- it's seen better days, and I would rather hold on to it than have it waste away.

So what I thought I'd do today is to make some shaving accessories to go with it.

So what you can do is buy kits for, like, the shaving brush, where you get the bristles and then a threaded end and then you can just use some small pieces of wood and create a new shaving brush.

So I'm going to mimic the handle of that in some apple that I got from a former co-worker of mine.

But that's not all.

With these kits that are pretty cool is that it also includes the holder for a replaceable blade razor.

So you can, again, use a piece of wood to turn a handle for it, which I thought was kind of fun.

And then, the kit comes with all the other assorted hardware accessories.

And then, there's also a small stand that I'll build later on, too, that goes with it to hang the brush and the razor from.

Now, it's pretty simple to do, but there are some hardware items that you need to install, and we can get started on how that's going to work.

All right, let's look at how these kits come.

You could see here this is the piece for the shaving stand.

So, there's the bottom piece that will thread onto the base and then the top end here that will hold the razor and brush holder.

And then, it's joined together with this section of brass tubing.

And that brass tubing is what goes on the inside of your piece of wood.

So, the first thing that you need to do is cut a piece of wood to its approximate length.

You want to be about 1/16 or an 1/8 inch extra long.

And then you need to drill a hole in it that matches the diameter -- outside diameter of the brass tubing.

I did that at the drill press, and you can find bits that are meant for these turning kits.

So they're extra long to be able to get through what can sometimes be pretty long pieces.

Now we need to glue this brass tubing to the inside of our piece of wood, and I'm gonna do that with epoxy.

Now, the thing about brass is that it can sometimes be pretty smooth on the outside or have some oils from shipping or from handling on it.

So you want to take some coarse sandpaper... ...and just scuff up the outside, and that's going to give it enough tooth, so to speak, so that it'll get a good bond with the epoxy and on the inside of the wood.

So what we'll do is just squirt out a little bit of five-minute epoxy here.

Then mix it up with a very special stir stick.

And what I like to do is butter a little bit on the outside of the tubing and then get some on the inside of the hole, as well.

I can just slide the tubing right in place.

Now, if you get a little epoxy on the inside of the tubing or it kind of clumps up around the ends, it's not a big deal.

Once it dries, we're going to clean that up in the next step.

Now, once the epoxy dries in the blank and has the brass tube secured, we want to clean up any of the schmutz that's left over on the ends, as well as anything that got inside the tube.

For that, you can use a special barrel trimming bit that has a long extension that augers out on the inside and then has these flat cutters near the base that not only clean up the glue, but squares up the ends of the blank.

Now, you can use this bit in a drill press, chuck it in your lathe, or even in a hand drill here.

So what I'm going to do is hold the blank in a hand screw so I have a good grip on it, and then I can just slide the bit into place.

So, here's what you're looking for.

What do you want to see is that any of the excess glue is trimmed away and that we've created a nice, smooth, flat surface on here that'll be easier to turn and it'll end up being a square assembly when I'm done.

I'll take care of this on the opposite end, and then I think we're just about ready to start turning.

Now, to attach our blank to the lathe for turning, I've mounted it on a long mandrel that's designed for these kind of kits, not only for shaving kits, but you can use them for turning pens and some of the other utensils.

Now, my blank threads right on here, and I can make adjustments so that it's held snugly as the lathe spins, that it'll turn and not catch.

The tail stock mounts into a small dimple on the end of the threaded portion of the knob, and then there's a long taper that fits inside the headstock.

For this kind of turning, I like to have the lathe spinning at about 3,000 RPM, maybe just a little bit less, something that you're comfortable with.

The faster it's spinning, the smoother the results that you're going to get.

Now, when I'm turning, since Logan and Chris are using more traditional turning tools, they do a lot more turning, frankly, than I do.

So what I'm going to be using are these carbide-tipped turning tools.

They act more like scrapers.

But what I really like about them, since I don't do a lot of turning, is that they have a really shallow learning curve.

I can get good results with them right away, and they're pretty familiar in using them.

So, they have a square tool, a diamond-tipped one, and a round-nosed one.

Now, for what I'm doing for this shaving kit, I'll primarily be using the square-tipped one and then the round-edged one.

The square one I'm going to use to just round the blank and then create my overall profile, and I can use the round one to make really fine sheering cuts and clean it up to minimize the amount of sanding that I'm going to do.

So, the first thing that I'm going to do, like I said, is get this going and then turn it from a square rough blank into something perfectly round.

Now that my handle is round, I can start working on the shape that I want.

And in addition to the material you choose, the final profile is up to you and as a way to customize the kit.

Now, for this one, I'm not going to go too crazy.

I'm just going to go with more of a barreled, kind of cigar shape to it.

And I'll start tapering it from about the center towards the ends.

The thing that I want to avoid, though, is making those ends too small for the hardware for the razor holder.

Thankfully, these turning kits like this come with mandrels that you put on either side of your blank.

Now, the mandrels come in different sizes to match the hardware kit, and they serve as a gauge so that you don't end up doing what I just said, turning the ends of your handle too small, so I can follow those along and get the shape that I want and know that the results are going to be consistent.

And once I'm happy with the overall shape, you can sand your piece of wood as smooth as you want.

Now, I worked up all the way through 600 grit, and I have it feeling nice and polished, but I can take that a step further and start getting into the finishing, all without leaving the lathe.

So what I have here is what's called sanding wax, and it's kind of like the buffing rouges and polishing compounds.

So, it's got some wax in it, some Danish oil, and a little bit of pumice stone as an abrasive.

So, using a paper towel, I can start up the lathe and I'll start applying it, and the abrasive in the wax will polish and smooth out the handle even more and, as you can see, start to apply a little bit of color to it.

And since the workpiece is spinning, I can buff out the wax.

And then, to finish things off, I'm gonna use a -- what's called a finishing wax, oddly enough, that has more of a harder wax in it, not as much oil, and creates a harder, smoother finish.

And I can apply it on and then just buff it out.

There, you can see the handle's taken on a nice color, and it is a nice, smooth satin finish to it.

All that's left now is for me to assemble it.

For the second of my turning projects, I'm making the shaving brush.

And, again, I'm using my great-grandpa's brush as a model here.

So, I just like how the shape of it is and how it feels in my hand.

So what I've done with my blank here is turned it roughly round, and then I use the calipers so that it's just slightly larger now than the largest diameter on the brush itself, which is this end at the handle and then the bulb here at the top.

Now this is set up a little bit differently than the handles.

The bristles that come with the brush kit have a threaded stud on the back end and that fits into a threaded insert on the end of the blank, and then that threads onto an attachment on the headstock.

So, what I'm gonna do now is take a pencil and, while the lathe is spinning, just like Chris did, and start laying out some high points and low points, so to speak, along here.

And then I'll use the calipers to base the size off of the original and turn down to those as I create the bulb at the top, this little fillet along the side and then the narrow section at the stem end.

All right.

After refining the profile of my shaving brush handle, then I went through the same steps that I did on the razor handle, and sanding it nice and smooth, working up to 600 grit, and then going through both the sanding wax and just applied the finishing wax.

And you can see how that apple really took on a nice color.

So, if you compare it to the one that belonged to my great-grandfather, you can see that they're not quite identical.

But I hope you can see that there's a family resemblance.

So, let's get this off here, and then we'll thread the bristles on.

There you go.

I think it's a nice upgrade to my shaving kit.

And who knows, maybe someday I get to pass this along to my grandson.

So, today, I'm gonna show you how we're gonna turn a massive walnut platter.

Now this is a piece of walnut that I cut a couple of months ago, so it's going to be fairly wet.

And during the drying process, it started to crack a little bit, which is okay.

I fortified it with some superglue to help hold those together.

So, the first thing that we have to do is get this thread onto the screw chuck, and then I'll walk you through the process of turning this guy into a big old platter.

Okay.

So let's talk about how we're going to turn this into a platter.

The first thing I've done is I have trued this up.

So now this is perfectly round based on where my face plate and my tail stock are.

Now we have to come back and clean up this face.

Now, it's important when you're turning something this large or even a smaller bowl blank to know that it's not going to be balanced when you first put it on.

Truing up the outside is going to help balance it, as will facing off the front and the back of the blank.

However, some blanks, even after you've done that, will not be completely balanced.

That's because different densities in the sapwood and the heartwood.

So, go ahead and keep the speed where you're comfortable at.

This one's about 250.

I'm gonna try to get it up to about 350 as I am doing the face here.

So, our next step is going to be to clean off this face.

This face that is currently facing the tail stock is going to become the bottom of the platter.

So what we're going to do is, we're going to turn a mortise here for our chuck to go into -- after I've cleaned this up -- then I'm also going to add an ogee profile to this.

So this area up here will become concave, and then going into the mortise and the foot will be convex.

So I'm going to go and face this off, and then we'll start adding the ogee.

Okay.

So, after I went ahead and faced this off, for the most part, I left a couple of areas that were not perfectly flat, but that's okay, because we're going to cut an ogee profile in this, and that's going to move the rest of this waste.

So I went ahead and faced it off and created this bevel.

And, really, a bevel is just to help hog through some of that unbalanced material, even though, like I mentioned before, the sapwood in this is never going to cause this to be perfectly balanced.

We can help balance it a little bit better by removing some of that meat, so I went ahead and did that.

Then, I can make a couple layout lines.

So the first one I made that was out here -- and that's about a third of the diameter of the platter, and that's where the concave portion of our ogee will be.

And then I made another mark, and that's designating where the foot will be.

And then I also came in with the calipers and marked the chuck jaw diameter.

And then, with a parting tool, I can outline the outside edge of the foot and then also create the recess for the chuck jaws.

Now, once I created the recess, I went ahead and took my bowl gouge -- I went to a smaller size -- and I removed the tail stock completely.

And that's okay in this instance.

Usually, I like to have the tail stock in place just to keep everything solid and safe.

But when removing this small material where the chuck is going to go, it's okay to remove the tail stock, in my opinion, and just take light cuts and hollow that out.

And I did leave a little nub in there for the tail stock to push into so I'm not putting a dimple in my finished area, which I still have some cleanup to do anyways.

So, now at this point, we can go ahead and concentrate on our shape.

And like I mentioned, this is going to be ogee.

So this bevel out here is gonna become curved, and I'm gonna do that with a fairly small bowl gouge.

I'm gonna do that by making swooping cuts from the center to the outside.

That's the way the grain direction flows on a bowl or on a platter.

So I want to be cutting with the grain, so I'm going to make that cut outside, and then I'll come in and blend in this into a nice, subtle flowing curve.

Now, it's important as you are turning, especially with traditional tools like these, to make sure you're stopping and sharpen often.

A sharp bowl gouge, even in wood that cuts fairly easily, a sharp gouge is gonna leave you a much better surface.

So, I'm gonna go ahead and tackle this ogee, then we'll flip it around and look at the inside.

Okay.

There we go.

So, I have the platter bottom pretty much where I'm happy with it, and I've sanded it up through about 600 grit.

Now, at this point, I like to grab a little bit of sealer.

I'm not gonna apply a finish right now, but with this being kind of wet still, I like to seal the fibers.

So, to do that, I'm gonna use just a little bit of shellac, and it's been thinned down, and it makes a great sealer, and it doesn't interfere with any finishes.

So, you can see how that figure of that walnut really pops even with just shellac on there.

So once I get a little Danish oil on there, it's gonna look great.

So now I'm going to pull this off, take the face plate off, I'm going to install the chuck, and expand the jaws into the recess we made.

The mortise is deeper than the foot is thick.

And what I mean by that is, the foot sticks up from the bottom about 1/16 of an inch.

And this mortise is about 3/16.

If that mortise was the same depth as the foot thickness, the only material that that chuck would have to hold onto is the thickness of the foot, which is not a good hold.

So we want to make sure that that mortise is deeper than the foot.

Now that it's held, I am gonna bring the tail stock in, and we're gonna use the tail stock just to apply a little extra pressure, make sure that thing's seated fully before we open the jaws fully.

There we go.

So, now I need to tackle facing this off, creating my rim, which again, the rim I'm going to make about a third of the diameter of the entire platter.

And then it's a simple hollowing operation.

And I'm going to hollow using a combination of my bowl gouges and my mate tool.

So I'm gonna go ahead and get this spinning, face it off, and create my rim.

So, first thing I did was face it off, get a nice flat face, and then I marked where I wanted the rim to be.

And then I cut that end with a parting tool.

Then shaping the rim was next.

And I end up with a little bit of a curve here, and it just feels nice as you hold, and it kind of lead you into the center of the platter.

Then, as I started to hollow it, the platter told me it needed a little bit of a bead around the lip, so I went ahead and put one in there.

And then I hollowed this out.

And the hollowing's pretty easy to do with a bowl gouge, and I took most of that waste out of there, left a little nubbin for the tail stock to hold onto.

Once I had that down to about as thin as I could get it, I pulled the tail stock away and then used the mate tool to remove the rest of that nubbin and come in and make a couple cleanup passes.

Then everything was easy to blend together with a bowl-nosed scraper, just taking light passes.

And, really, the scraper is just there to blend the two marks together.

Then, it was on to sanding, and for large platters like this and the inside of bowls, I like to use a power sander.

It's a sanding pad attached to a right-angle drill, and this allows me to reach inside of bowls and really get good, precise sanding pressure where I need it.

So, now, the only thing we have left to do is to add a little bit of finish and maybe some sanding wax, so let's go ahead and do that.

I think the best part of working at the lathe is just how easy it is to customize whatever you're turning.

Whether you're making tool handles, utensils and accessories or bowls and platters, whatever ends up is something that comes directly from your hand.

And it's unique to what you're doing.

Now, if you'd like to see some plans and some articles to help you improve your skills at the lathe, it's all at our website, WoodsmithShop.com.

There you'll find other woodworking plans, videos, and more until you're ready to join us right back here in the woodsmith shop.

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ Phil: If you'd like to get more video tips and techniques, sign up for the free weekly Woodsmith eTip.

Every week, you'll receive an e-mail with a video tip to get more out of your table saw, router table, and more.

Sign up at WoodsmithShop.com.

Everything in today's show comes from the newly expanded Woodsmith Guild Edition, with shop projects, plans, tips, and techniques.

To get a free preview issue of the Woodsmith Guild Edition and a free "Woodsmith" book, go to WoodsmithShop.com.

In addition, past seasons of "The Woodsmith Shop" are available on DVD.

Or you can watch them online from your computer, tablet, or mobile device.

For more information, go to WoodsmithShop.com.

Announcer: Major funding for "The Woodsmith Shop" has been provided by... Old Masters -- craftsman-quality stains and finishes since 1953.

Additional funding provided by... ♪♪ Titebond wood glues -- the pro's advantage.

And by... Kreg -- from the first cut to the final assembly, providing woodworkers with products that help to simplify woodworking challenges.

Kreg.

And by... [ Up-tempo music plays ] ♪♪ ♪♪