Project Tutorials

Baseball Cap

Click image for enlarged view

With the bowl gouge side vertical and the bevel rubbing the wood surface a clean finish cut can be made. The convex shape of the side ground bowl gouge allows the shaving to come off the wood with little resistance in a good shearing cut.

The shavings produced by the above cut. Shavings are long and thin because they slide right over the surface of the inside of the flute without having to curl away.

Shear scraping the bill area. Apply pressure down onto the gouge above the tool rest surface and pull the gouge in a smooth motion to clean cut the bill area. This will help with the tool bounce when turning a lot of air.

The bill area surface from the tool. Don’t leave any torn grain, cut it cleanly at this stage.

Using a spindle gouge to make a V cut for a bead detail.

Adding a bead detail that imitates the string over the bill on some caps. I am using a spindle gouge.

Sanding the cap before moving on to hollow the cap. It is easier to sand some now while the blank is running true.

Hand sand the bill area now. Remember to pick the bill you want to keep and sand it.

Start of thinning the bill to final thickness. Start at the outer edge and work toward the center in small steps. The outer edge will start to warp out of round once thinned and no more turning can be done on that area, make sure to get the area cut cleanly before moving on.

You cannot use a light shinning through the wood to help gauge the thickness, all you would see is the light itself since you are turning mostly air. Angle a light at the gouge tip so you can see the cut line the gouge is making and the depth of cut you are taking. In this picture you can see the line of cut at the gouges tip.

To find the surface of the spinning wood slowly present the bevel heel of the gouge to the wood and bring the cutting edge around until it starts to cut.

The bevel of the bowl gouge is aligned to the direction of cut. The cutting is done with the lower edge of the tip of the gouge.

You may notice when you stop the lathe that the leading edged of the wood on each side may be a different thickness than the trailing edge because the wood can flex away from the gouge after it contacts it or the gouge can grab the wing and take a deeper cut depending on the way the gouge is presented to the wood. If this happens try sharpening your gouge and presenting the gouge at a different angle or rotating the flute more to the side or up.

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