How to Turn with a Chatter Tool

As a rule, when you're doing work on the layout, chatter is something you do not want. What it means is you’ve maybe pressed too hard or your chisel is dulling and you end up with these funky striations all over your turning. But there is a case where chatter is cool and adds a really nice detail to your work.

For example, on these boxes like this, I've intentionally chattered the lid. And that provides us really, really neat detail across the top here. It's very, very unique. I'm going to show you how to do that.

It's done with a specific tool which oddly enough, it is called a chatter tool. The deal with this is that I've got this mount here, a piece of steel that projects out of this holding device and of course that piece of steel is quite thin. So, usually when you work on the lave, you want the tool rest as close as it can be to the cutting action. In this case, I'm going to have the tool rest way back here and I'm going to allow this tip to flex as I work with it. So, it comes with its own instructions. And there are a bunch of variables that you can work with here. Of course how much steel I let sticking out is going to control how much chatter I get, how fast the lave itself is running, how quickly I move across the work. Well, that’s the variables come together to change the kind of pattern that you can get. All that stuff is laid out in the owner’s manual for this tool.

Now, a couple of things about my turning here, I'm working on another lidded box. I've got it mounted in this chuck because eventually I'm going to move the tailstock away so that I can work at it open ended. When I do this step, I like to have it still supported between centers so that I can get some pressure on here and make that chatter happen. This particular box is maple and cherry. It's important that you’ve got a hardwood. When we cut into this end grain, if it's softwood like a pine, it just isn’t hard enough to create the chatter that we want. It's really just going to tear out. It's not going to work well.

The other thing that’s important out of that is it is an end grain cut. Face grain on typical bower would also not chatter very well. So, end grain cut in hardwoods chatter tool works great. Let me show you the setup. I'm going to move my tool rest back. I want to get it to a point where as I said this is going to cantilever out so that that tip gets the opportunity to vibrate up and down, to chatter up and down. Starting in the center, I'm going to pull that chatter tool out toward the outside. Again, variables, RPM of the lave, how quickly I move, how much the tool sticks out all of those things affect the pattern.

So, we’re ready to make a cut here. Let me show you how cool this is.

[Demonstration]

That pass provided a pretty neat pattern across here. Now, I intentionally stopped just a little bit short of the outside. I'm going to leave that alone. That’s going to be the beginning of the rim on my small lidded box. It takes just a little bit of practice. What I would do when you're first getting started with the chatter tool is take a spindle like this. Do some chatter, face that off. Do another one, face it off. Do another one, change the RPMs, change all the variables and just keep working with different setups and look for looks that you like on your lidded box.

Once you get the hang of it, it's easy to do. It adds a wonderful detail to projects like this.