How To Use A Parting Tool On A Wood Lathe

Rather than cutting a woodturning scraper scrapes using a burr.

How to use a parting tool on a wood lathe. Stand the tool on edge on the tool rest with its blade at a 90 angle to the workpiece. Let the wood come to the tool for best results. This burr must be kept sharp to be effective.

These parting tools are generally thin blades of HSS but there are also carbide insert parting tools available for the task or you can grind a cutoff tool out of HSS. When turning a bowl on the lathe and holding it by a tenon in a multi-jawed chuck the parting tool can be used to part the bowl from the lathe. Can also be used for feathering cuts small beads and sizing cuts.

There are two ways of doing this. Being excited I went to the wood lathe to try out the new parting tool. I was working on a handle for a gouge blade.

Next I took the blade over to the disk sander and ground it down to bare metal. This tool comes with a replaceable stainless steel cutter blade that contains a permanent mounted Negative Rake Carbide Cutter for smooth clean parting through all materials with no sharpening required. Then use the BP tool to round the sides of the center ring to form a bead.

I then cut the end of the blade off to square it off and I cut and ground down the teeth. Lay your lathe tools on the tool rest positioned at an angle. They truly are designed for parting so in the end you will use the parting tool to separate your finely tuned piece from any type of remaining.

Firmly support the tool with both hands. The tool can be upside-down and the workpiece rotates in the usual direction. Took it over to the 1 belt sander cleaned up the blade a little more and fine tuned the wood edges.