Turning with a Chatter Tool

As a rule, when you're doing work on the lathe, chatter is something you do not want. What is means is, you've maybe pressed too hard, or your chisel is dull, 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 this 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 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 lathe, you want the tool arrest as close as it can be to the cutting action. In this case, I'm going to have the tool arrest way back here, and I'm going to allow this tip to flex as I work with it. So, it comes with it's 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 lathe itself running, how quickly I move across the work, lots of variable come together, to change the kind of pattern that you can get. All that stuff is laid out in the owners 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 on 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 a 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, and the other thing that's important out of that is, it is an end grain cut. Face grain on typical bowl work, 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 arrest 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, the chatter up and down. Starting in the center, I'm going to pull that chatter tool out, toward the outside. Again, variables, rpm on the lathe, how quickly I move, how much the tool sticks out, all those things affect the pattern. So, we're ready to make a cut here, and let me show you how cool this is.

That pass, provided a pretty neat pattern across here, and 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. Takes just a little bit of practice, what I would do, when you're first getting started with a 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 rpm, 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, adds a wonderful detail to projects like this.