One of those days!

I had asked about stacking tubes and did it with a nice black blank for a chrome Accord kit. Worked great! Anyway, got it squared (another post today) and started to turn. First was ye olde spindle roughing gouge. OK so far. But got some catches which resulted in dimples. Got those turned off. Same again! Went to the spindle gouge which helped. Had a nice smooth finish. But...Murphy rides again. Kept getting little grooves wit dimples. Arrggh! Finally got it sanded down but it was too small.
Seems I have a problem with dimples toward the end where I can't turn enough off to eliminate them.
Sharpened both tools on the CBN 180 grit wheel. Actually sharpened at least twice. Any and all advice is most welcome. I was very upset as the blank was a perfect match- black with a bit of grey smoke.
Second question for this post. Anyone use a skew for synthetic blanks? Might need to brush up on my skew skills.

I use a skew on all materials.

Don, does that include rounding the square blanks? The blank was a very hard material, BTW.

Woodchipper said:

Don, does that include rounding the square blanks? The blank was a very hard material, BTW.

Click to expand...

Yes. From square to complete. But, I doubt I've turned every material. I have not used True Stone, M3 Metal, Inlace Acrylester and possibly others.

I sometimes take the blank and knock the corners off with a disk sander. It doesn't have to be perfect, you just want to remove those corners.

Synthetics range from very soft to hard as nails and chippy too!

A skew for the soft ones, and carbide for the hard ones. With the hard / chippy ones, I use carbide and go against common lore to present the tool horizontal and below the center line of the blank. I get endless ribbons of material but no chip out pits. It does take a bit longer, but works well.