When you have the wood rotating at about this speed grip the handle of it firmly with your right hand, lay the back of the chisel on the rest and press down on the blade with your left hand as shown in [Fig. 20]. Of course the top edge of the wood is turning toward you.
Whatever you do when you are roughing down a stick of wood don’t try to take off too large a cut. Go at it very gently with the point of your chisel and as it begins to cut you can swing the tool around so that the whole width of the blade is cutting.
Gouges are used in the same way as chisels and with them you can turn out hollow parts. A parting tool is used for cutting off the ends of the wood after you have finished turning it.
 | ||
 | SIZING WITH A PAIR OF CALIPERS | |
| A REGULAR SIZING TOOL | ||
Fig. 21. sizing the turned work
When you want to turn a piece of wood down to a given size you can do so by testing it with a pair of calipers, as shown in [Fig. 21], or you can size it with a regular sizing tool. To size the work measure off the distance between the points of the calipers with a rule for whatever thickness you want the turned part; then as you turn the wood you can try it from time to time until the wood will just slip through between the points.
The Art of Wood Carving
Carving is by all odds the hardest of all woodworking processes to learn and yet there are some simple forms of it that are at once easy to do and pretty to look at. While carving is an art in itself it can be used with fine effect in combination with some kinds of scroll sawed and turned work.
Your Set of Carving Tools.
—To begin with you can get along very well with a set of six carving tools. A set of this number is made up of a ³⁄₈ inch, a ¹⁄₄ inch, a ¹⁄₂ inch and a ⁵⁄₁₆ inch straight shank carving tools and two of these are chisels and four are gouges, so you see that they are just about the same as carpenters’ and turners’ chisels and gouges. Such a set of tools costs about $3.00.