The Skew Part 1

you asked for it

This is part of a series I am making about using the skew, I’m making this portion open to all subscribers. I hope you find it useful and consider becoming a supporter. It’s your support that makes it possible for me to dedicate my time to making these posts. To those who already support my efforts here, I appreciate it more than you know and love it when I can address topics that directly address your goals.

So I hear you want to get better with the skew this year. At least you aren’t asking for 6 pack abs or reading a book a week, I can’t help you there. But the skew is an easy one. I know how improbable that sounds, but if you bear with me, I think you’ll find this tool can come out of the shadows of your subconscious to become your favorite turning tool.

To get where we want to go is going to take more than “One Weird Trick Make Your Skew Catchproof”. It’s going to take some understanding of how the tool does it’s job and lots of body mechanics. I don’t play golf, but I think it offers a decent analogy. Even non players know, it’s all about the swing. You can’t just focus on the moment the club is in contact with the ball, wishing it would be correct and give the desired result. It’s the same with the skew. Just fixating on the point of contact leads to lots of shifting the tool around to find the “sweet spot”, but that usually results in a catch or a lack of control as you discover you aren’t actually prepared to move across the work piece. Just a few of those jarring catches and your body freezes, your grip tightens and you nervous system is shot (sound familiar?)

When using a skew, or a golf club, the real action is in the motion before, during and after the contact. Just reducing the focus to the moment of contact won’t help. Yes, the position at the point of contact matters, but if the other body movements aren’t practiced and natural, you won’t have the consistent positioning to succeed.

I’ll drop the golf analogy, after one more comparison. Just like you need to practice the swing without a ball, learning to use the skew doesn’t start with cutting a piece of wood, a tool in your hands, or even the machine plugged in. It’s all body position. The comment I repeat the most when teaching turning is “you’re standing in the wrong place”. I’m convinced this is the root of most turning troubles.

When people step up to the lathe, they tend to start in a comfortable position. There in lies the problem. If you are comfortable to start with, any movement is towards discomfort, effort and imbalance. Not a recipe for success.

The biggest misconception about the lathe is that you just stand there and do it with your arms. It’s actually takes a lot of athleticism and muscle development, mostly in the legs and hips. Here’s the first challenge, hold your hand, with the first two fingers extended, against your body as though you’re trying to discreetly rob a bank teller (like you do) and move smoothly from one end of the lathe to the other without your fingers changing direction or height. Here is a video of this exercise. Forgive the lighting, I’m getting used to the crazy winter light in my shop.

As you see in the video, just standing in the middle and pivoting will require you to compensate for the changing relationship of the tool to the surface at every moment. Another favorite comparison is to think about writing a sentence on a piece of paper. You may not realize it, but as you are making all the fine movements to form the letters, your hand is also evenly advancing across the page. Imagine placing your hand firmly on one side of the page and then advancing only the pencil in your fingers as you form the letters. Obviously, by the end of the sentence, the pencil will be extended far from your hand and the letters would be terribly difficult to form. Most folks try to turn like this.

To recap the video, place your feet so you might be uncomfortable, with all your weight on one foot that is directly below you, with your knee bent. The other foot is as far down the length of the tool as you can put it, often on the heel. As you start moving, you shift your weight distribution until it’s all resting over the other leg. It takes muscle and balance to do this. This needs to be practiced until it feels natural. Later, when the tool is cutting beautifully and you want the cut to continue, most of the motion will be taking place like this.

Before I go further, I need to point out that real progress will not happen in one session of practice. The new muscles you are developing will tire and you will start reverting to thinking some magic with the tool will solve the issues. The large shifts in weight will stop and the catches will start. Sound familiar?

I see this as good news, spend 5-10 minutes, a few times a week, dancing around from one end of the lathe to the other. After a week of these short bursts of focus and development, you will start to notice everything else getting easier. Forgive me while I indulge in one last sports analogy. Do you ever watch a great billiards player and it looks like they get all easy shots? It’s because they spend as much time focusing on where the cue ball will end up as they do hitting a ball in a pocket. It’s the same here, once it’s natural to put your body in a good position, you will become that turner who makes it look easy.

There is a bunch more to say before we plug in the tools, but I really do want you to try this exercise, actually, it might just be that “One Weird Trick”.