Adventures with the Minilathe 2 – the Real Roughing Gouge

In my first Adventure with the Minilathe I said I would be making a roughing gouge, but as many of you saw right away, it turned out to be a scraper. A good tool by my standards, but not what I promised you. So here I try to deliver on that, and make a proper roughing gouge. Enjoy, and remember to be Inspired!

Why am I doing this?

I feel like I should address this subject in a little more detail. Why do I bother making these sub-par tools? I could just buy some better ones, after all. There are some aspects to it.

One certainly is what I perceive as a big motivation behind DIY, which is to make something yourself. The idea of taking a piece of metal and repurpose it as a turning tool is something very appealing to me. Using it would give me these warm feelings of knowing that “I made it”. At least until I got frustrated with how it performs.

Another reason is that I want ot do something similar to Izzy Swan’s 50$ Wood Shop. The idea is to take a small budget, buy something from it and expand on it by making money to invest. I recently started selling on Etsy, and I have this idea that I will only buy turning tools if I made money with my turnings.

Then again, as noble as I hope this idea is, I have not yet sold anything, and only two pieces for sale anyway. Somehow, with other projects I wanted to do or had to get out of the way, I did not manage to produce more items, which would probably increase my chances of selling something. So unless I give up on the idea it will probably be a while until I get some actual tools.

How to improve the roughing gouge

There are a few things I will try to make this tool better. One would be to try different angles after doing some research – maybe a different angle can improve the stability of the cutting edge.

Another weak point is of course the inside sourface of the pipe I used. I got this one from the home improvement store, and it probably goes without saying that this was the cheapest they had – at that length. Using a more expensive one with a cleaner inside might improve the performance of the tool, but of course there comes the point when it would be more profitable to actually buy a proper lathe tool.

Maybe the inside surface could be flattened or ground down with a rotary tool. It would be easier to just work with a part of the pipe that does not have the weld in it.

Thanks for watching and reading, and remember to be Inspired!