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Help with diagonal marks left on tenon

Posted: Tue Dec 16, 2014 4:47 am
by Charl
I've been having problems lately when cutting my tenon on the lathe. The cutter is leaving diagonal marks, as seen on the photo.
I've sharpened, honed and re-sharpened the cutter. I've made sure the cutter is not too low or too high regarding the rodstock. I've made sure that the carriage does not have any play. All I can think of at the moment, is that there is a problem with the feed. But why now only, after all these years of doing it without any problem?
Any of you tool-clever guys have an idea or help?
The lathe is a Myford ML7 and the tenon on the photo has had a rough cut, to show the diagonal lines better.
Image

Re: Help with diagonal marks left on tenon

Posted: Tue Dec 16, 2014 4:59 am
by caskwith
Are you using power feed to make the cut? Also lets see your cutting tool.

Re: Help with diagonal marks left on tenon

Posted: Tue Dec 16, 2014 9:33 am
by sandahlpipe
You could be feeding too quickly or at too low a speed.

Re: Help with diagonal marks left on tenon

Posted: Tue Dec 16, 2014 10:06 am
by d.huber
I feel your pain. A few months ago I went through a phase where nothing had changed in my process (that I acknowledged) but none of my tools were producing the results I expected.

My best advice is to go back through your process step by step, relearn a few things that you think you know for sure, and start manually feeding when you cut your tenon.

For a potential quick fix, try adjusting the height of your cutting tool. For some reason all of my tools except for my facing tool cut more cleanly when they're ABOVE center.

Re: Help with diagonal marks left on tenon

Posted: Tue Dec 16, 2014 2:35 pm
by Charl
Thanks gents, I'm back to a mirror-like cut.
I re-checked the height of the cutter, after remembering that I changed the shim a while ago.
Seems like what I thought was the perfect height, was actually a teeny weeny tad too high.
Dope!

Re: Help with diagonal marks left on tenon

Posted: Tue Dec 16, 2014 9:58 pm
by Tyler
In other news, where do you get the lizard skin ebonite?

Re: Help with diagonal marks left on tenon

Posted: Tue Dec 16, 2014 10:59 pm
by LatakiaLover
Andrew saves it for special, in-the-know customers.

Re: Help with diagonal marks left on tenon

Posted: Wed Dec 17, 2014 1:09 am
by Charl
:lol: Lizard skin? Wenge, actually.

Re: Help with diagonal marks left on tenon

Posted: Wed Dec 17, 2014 4:32 am
by caskwith
Glad you got it sorted. When setting heights I always err on the side of too low rather than too high as rarely will that cause a big problem. Only exception is parting tools, these should be set ever so slightly too high to prevent digging in.

Re: Help with diagonal marks left on tenon

Posted: Thu Dec 18, 2014 2:01 am
by Charl
Thanks Chris. Yip, parting tools are a different matter!