Glossary

When you begin to learn woodturning, you may be intimidated or confused by the terminology. What does it mean to ride the bevel, for example? Here is a glossary of woodturning terms you may hear when you watch a woodturning demonstration, attend a chapter meeting, or read an article. You are now on your way to talking like a woodturner.

Jump to: Turning terms · Lathe parts · Tools · Types of turning · Safety equipment

Turning terms

Bead: A convex design element that stands proud of the surface. Beads can be turned in many different ways including full round (a bead that is not attached to the project surface, also called a captive ring), round, half round, and quarter round.
Between Centers: When you attach a workpiece by holding it at both the headstock and tailstock end of the lathe, you are turning between centers.
Blank: The rough piece of wood after it has been cut and processed for turning on the lathe. Faceplate blanks for bowls and platters may be round or square. Spindle blanks are typically long square sections.
Burnishing: Polishing by friction. Woodturners usually burnish a piece by holding a handful of shavings against it. The shavings should come from the work being burnished.
Burr/Burl: A lumpy, warty looking growth on a tree. Woodturners crave burl for its distinctive figure. It can range from tightly packed eyes to swirling grain with eyes that seems almost molten.
Cove: A semicircular, oval, or U-shaped concave depression running around the circumference of a spindle turning, across the face or edge of a flat piece of wood, or along the length of a spindle.
Crushed Stone Inlay: Any area on a woodturning filled with crushed stones, then sanded smooth. Cyanoacrylate adhesive or epoxy typically hold the stone in place. Crushed stone is a popular embellishment. You can use it to fill a void or to create banded inlays or designs.
Ogee: An S-shaped curve, also called a cyma curve. An ogee is essentially a bead that blends seamlessly into a cove.
Pith: The narrow channel in the innermost part of the tree, its trunk, each branch and twig.
Riding the Bevel: The bevel is the area just below the cutting edge of most tools. Rubbing or riding the bevel on your work pieces gives you better tool control for a cleaner and safer cut.

Lathe parts

Banjo: This component mainly serves to support the toolrest. You can clamp the banjo in place anywhere along the lathe bed. Why is this part called a banjo? No one knows for sure; one common explanation is that early toolrest supports resembled the musical instrument.
Bed/ways: The long, rigid, horizontal part of the lathe that supports the headstock, banjo, and tailstock.
Center: The general name for accessories that help hold a workpiece in place on the lathe. Drive centers, used in the headstock, have teeth that bite into the work. Live centers, used in the tailstock, have some sort of point at one end that engages the workpiece, and bearings that allow the pointed end to spin freely.
Chuck: The general name for accessories that grip a workpiece at the headstock. There are many different types of chucks, including scroll chucks, screw chucks, collet chucks, and pin chucks.
Collet Chuck: An accessory designed to hold a small tenon on a workpiece or the end of a dowel. Collet chucks typically grip pieces up to 1 inch in diameter in a split cylinder that is tightened around the workpiece with a threaded ring.
Handwheel: A wheel on the headstock that helps you attach chucks, faceplates, and other accessories, and to rotate the workpiece by hand.
Headstock: The housing that contains the spindle and the spindle support bearings, as well as the belts and pulleys that transfer power from the motor to spin the workpiece.
Mandrel: A shaft or spindle secured in a lathe’s headstock, and used to hold small parts such as pen bodies in place while you turn them.
Morse Taper: The term for the opening in a lathe’s headstock and tailstock, as well as for the shaft on accessories that fit in these openings. A Morse Taper is known as a locking taper, because the tapered opening holds the accessory securely; it generally must be tapped free with a long bar. There are three common sizes of Morse Taper. No. 1 is the smallest, generally used on older lathes. No. 2 is the most widely used today. No. 3 is the largest, used on some heavy-duty lathes.
Motor: The lathe’s power source.
Pin Chuck: The name for a type of scroll chuck that has long, thin jaws. A pin chuck is intended to hold small workpieces.
Quill: The sleeve of a lathe tailstock in which the spindle is mounted.
Screw Chuck: An accessory that has a large screw protruding from a thick plate. You thread the screw onto the headstock spindle, then thread the workpiece onto the protruding screw.
Scroll Chuck: An accessory that has four self-centering jaws that grip a workpiece.
Speed Control: What you use to change the lathe speed. Some lathes have a set of stepped pulleys connected with a belt; shifting the belt to different pulleys changes the speed. Other lathes have electronic speed control, essentially a rheostat that changes the motor’s speed as you turn a knob.
Spindle: The central portion of the lathe’s headstock and tailstock. The headstock spindle is threaded to accept chucks, faceplates, and other accessories, and it is bored with a Morse Taper. The tailstock spindle can be advanced or retracted with a handwheel and locked in place with a threaded lever. The tailstock spindle is also bored with a Morse taper.
Steady Rest: An accessory clamped to the lathe bed and used to support long, thin workpieces as a way of minimizing vibration.
Tailstock: A movable assembly mounted on the lathe bed that you use with various accessories to support the workpiece.
Tailstock Handwheel: A wheel with a handle that you use to move the quill by hand.
Tailstock Quill Lock: Used to lock the quill in place.
Toolrest: A T-shaped component. The vertical part of the toolrest is a thick rod that locks into a socket on the banjo. The horizontal part of the toolrest—typically straight, but also curved or S-shaped—supports the end of a woodturning tool. You can freely rotate, raise, or lower the toolrest and lock it in place with a clamp on the banjo.

Tools

Beading Tool: A small chisel with a semicircular cutting end, used to form a bead.
Bedan: A cutting tool generally made with a wedge-shaped cross section. It is used in spindle turning to create beads, coves, and tapers. The bedan is very popular in European countries, especially France.
Boring Tool: A type of hollower used to enlarge and accurately finish a large bore (hole).
Bowl Gouge: A gouge with a deep flute and a thick cross-section, mainly used for faceplate turning.
Carbide Tools: The general term for specialized scrapers that use replaceable cutters made from carbide. The cutters are generally square, for roughing or tapering; rounded, for shaping coves and beads; or pointed, for detail work. Proponents of these tools say they are easier to use than conventional gouges and skews.
Chatter Tool: A specialized tool to create decorative textures and patterns.
Chisel: A cutting tool that is square or rectangular in cross-section and ground with a double bevel at the cutting end.
Cut-off Tool: See Parting Tool.
Detail Gouge: A variant of the spindle gouge. Its cutting end is ground to a fingernail-like point. This tool is meant for fine detail work on spindles and bowls.
Diamond Parting Tool: A parting tool with tapers ground along its length to provide clearance for the tool. In cross section, the tool has a diamond shape. Because of that shape, the tool is unlikely to bind in a deep cut.
Gouge: The general term for a cutting tool with a flute along its length. Modern gouges are made from round tool steel blanks.
Hollower: The general term for many different types of tools designed to cut out the deep sections of steep bowls, vases and hollow vessels. Hollowers often have very long handles, to maintain enough leverage when working in a deep vessel, with the cutting edge far away from the hand rest.
Hook Tool: A specialized turning tool that features a hook-shaped cutting tip. Some turners favor hook tools for end grain hollowing projects.
Negative Rake Scraper: A scraper with a secondary bevel ground on its top face. Used for light finishing cuts, a negative-rake scraper is said to be easier to use and produces a smoother surface than a conventional scraper.
Parting Tool: A pointed tool used to separate (part off) work from the lathe and to cut a narrow channel into the workpiece.
Point Tool: A specialized tool that cuts fine accent lines to separate decorative patterns.
Scraper: A tool that removes wood by scraping across the grain instead of cutting through it. Sharpening a scraper raises a burr along the cutting edge; it’s the burr that does the tool’s work. Scrapers need frequent sharpening and are used with or without the burr, depending on the species and the turner’s preference. Scrapers come in many different sizes, thicknesses and shapes.
Skew Chisel: A chisel-shaped cutting tool with the edge ground at an angle, not square to the shaft. Some turners prefer a skew with a straight cutting edge; others prefer one with a curved cutting edge. Skew chisels are used only on spindle work, never on faceplate work. They should be honed after sharpening to create a razor edge. One of the most feared and loved of all woodturning tools, skew chisels are used primarily in spindle turning for turning beads, making V cuts, and for shaping tapers. The skew requires good tool control and ample practice to master. When properly sharpened and honed, a skew can leave a finish on the surface of the wood that needs little, if any sanding. The skew is typically made from a piece of rectangular tool steel; some are ground to be oval in cross-section.
Spindle Gouge: A gouge with a flute that is shallower than that on a bowl gouge. You use a spindle gouge to turn beads, coves, tapers, shoulders, ogee curves, and various combinations of these shapes. Modern spindle gouges are milled from round bar stock.
Spindle Roughing Gouge: A cutting tool designed to remove the square corners from a spindle and to do the rough shaping of gentle curves.
Spindle Roughing Tool: See Spindle Roughing Gouge.
Swan Neck Hollowing Tool: Increases the reach and angle of the turner. Used when blind turning and undercutting is made necessary or where reach is restricted.
Texturing Tool: A specialized tool with a textured head to cut shapes and patterns into the work.
Thread Cutting System: A specialized tool to cut wood threads cleanly and consistently.

Types of turning

Green Turning: Turning newly cut or recently cut wood, which has a high moisture content. Green turning is easy, as tools readily cut the wood, and produces less dust. However, because wood shrinks as it dries, a green turning may warp or crack. Some turners deliberately allow the wood to distort, so that each finished piece has a unique shape. Others try to minimize the distortions by turning a piece twice: once, when green, only to its general shape, leaving enough thickness so that it will dry reasonably uniformly. Once the wood stabilizes, the piece is turned to its final shape and thickness.
Multiaxis Turning: The practice of turning a single piece multiple times, using a different pair of centers each time. You can remount the work piece by hand, or use a special chuck that can be adjusted to hold the workpiece off its true center.
Natural Edge Turning: A piece that includes the outside of the tree trunk or limb as its edge. Typically artistic turnings, natural-edge pieces are usually bowls or hollow vessels, and are usually green turned to final dimension.
Ornamental Turning: A method that requires a specialized machine called a rose-engine lathe. The piece is mounted on a rocking headstock, and a spinning tool cuts exotic and decorative patterns.
Segmented Turning: Any turning that incorporates numerous small pieces of wood in its design. Segmented turnings include ones where the entire turning is made from segments, as well as those where only a small portion of the turning is segmented. Larger segmented turnings can include several thousand pieces of wood, all precisely cut and assembled to form special designs or pictures.

Safety equipment

AAW strongly recommends wearing a full face shield whenever the lathe is turned on. See Safety First for the full recommendations.

Dust Collector: A system consisting of a hose, a large fan, and containers that draw chips and dust away from a woodworking machine and out of the air.
Dust Mask: A paper-like personal protection device that covers your mouth and nose to prevent you from inhaling dust.
Face Shield: A clear guard that protects your entire face (or part of it) from injuries caused by chips and shards flying off the workpiece.
Half-Mask Respirator: A personal protection device that covers your mouth and nose to prevent you from inhaling dusts. Some half mask respirators can also be fitted with cartridges that offer protection against certain fumes.
Safety Glasses: Toughened glasses or goggles that protect the eyes when you use power tools.