Woodturning Skew Chisel

Video Transcript

"The skew chisel is the primary tool used for smoothing on the lathe. The standard skew chisel is set up ground at a seventy degree angle and twenty five on the sides with a straight edge. This is similar to what you'd have if you take a look in your home shop with a regular chisel that you'd be using for cleaning out mortises or whatever. A variation off the straight side of the skew is with the radius. This allows you to do to cut shouldered areas on the lathe. And another feature on this particular skew is that the edge is rounded. If you take a look here where that it’s square there's a chance that these corners are going to get caught on your tool rest and cause a nick. With this rounded edge it allows you to move smoother and form and shape your beads a little bit easier. And a last variation is the oval skew and if you look at the shape you can see it is almost oval, it very little on the edge. This allows you to a lot more flexibility on twisting and turning the tool as you do your work."