Wood Turning tools

Wood turning tools is mainly used for designing and shaping the wood for making articles like furniture, pencils, cricket and baseball bats, spindles, vessels etc. In woodturning, wood is kept moving while the tool used for cutting and shaping remains almost stationary. There are different types of wood turning tools and gouges.

Turning tools

Turning tools are made from different type materials like steel, carbon, powdered metal. Wood turning tools should always be kept sharp in order to have a clean cut on the wood. Turning tools like cutters, scrapers and chisels have been in use for thousands of years. Nevertheless, the materials used for making these tools have changed to adapt to the new requirements in woodturning. The woodcutter tools are now called gouges as they have a groove in the center. The tool used to scrape away the wood is called scraper and cutters, which are flat in shape, are known as chisels.

Gouges:

Gouge is a cutting woodwork tool used for doing detailed work on wood. There are different types of gouges available for different wood works. Gouges of different types are manufactured with variations in the curve of the channel in a gouge and by varying the thickness of the material used. Gouges are mainly used for making spindles round and smooth and for shaping bowls and vessels.

Types of turning tools

Wood turning tools are commonly used for spindle and face plate turning. Normally, a wood turning tool comprises of three parts, namely, a handle, a shaft and a scraping or cutting tip. Some of the common types of turning tools are:

Parting tool is mainly used for parting the wood for general work and an ultra thin parting tool allows minimal wastage of wood when grain matching or when working on smaller objects like boxes, pens, candle stands etc.

Skew chisel is used for smoothing the flat spindles, cutting beads and for making finer details on wood. They are never used in faceplate work and are only used in spindle work.

Hollowing tool is mainly used to cut out deep portions from the wood for making bowls, vases and hollow vessels. They are provided with very long handles so that they can work far away from the hand rest.

Chatter tool is a fine design making woodwork tool that is actually a flexible scraper used for making decorative chatter marks on already turned wood items.

Apart from all these basic turning tools, several other tool types are available for special purposes to create special designs on wood.

Types of Gouges:

The various types of gouges which help in wood turning are:

Roughing gouge - It is a wide fluted gouge used commonly for rounding a wooden spindle and giving it the required shape. It usually gives a large cut and hence not recommended to be used for making any faceplate work.

Spindle gouge – It is also known as detailed gouge, as it is used to create intrinsic details on spindles, beads and other wood works. It is a shallow fluted gouge when compared to the roughing gouge.

Bowl gouge – As the name implies, it is mainly used in making vessels and bowls. It is a deep fluted gouge and is used to turn and shape the outside and inside of bowls and vessels. It has thicker shaft and longer handle which enables it to cut farther away from the hand rest. 

There are different types of wood turning hand tools and gouges that are available in the market today, both for the novice user or for the experienced wood worker.