• Choose clear, straight grained, soft wood like pine, alder or poplar to practice with before moving on to harder and irregularly grained wood.
• Instead of using a bandsaw to trim rough stock to an octagonal shape before mounting it on the lathe – enhance your tool skills by using a roughing out gouge to turn square stock to round.
• Use a spindle gouge and slow lathe speed to further shape your stock once it’s been rounded.
• To turn bowls, mount the stock with grain running lengthwise.
• Get to know your tools. Gouge and round nose tools cut flat and concave surfaces; skews shape convex and flat surfaces; and on bowls use a bowl turning gouge.
• Generally, turn larger diameters first, working from the top to bottom of a bead, and from the outside to the center of a bowl.

Sources

LeeValley.com

Oneway.ca