I'd like to throw a new wrinkle into this discussion. I recently turned a large 13" square live edge cedar tray on a poplar glue block. I though the tray would look nice with that glue block turned into a foot ring, which I finished on the vacum chuck. It came out great, and the half-inch or so of lift from the contrasting wood really classed it up, I felt.
But I get crazy ideas sometimes, I mean really crazy (but more and more lately, they work if I plan out my procedures carefully!). I've got a really fancy (read expensive!) dry round bowl blank in gorgeous pomele sapele. As I don't want to give up any of this expensive wood to a tenon or mortise, what if I did the following:
1. Round/true/face it off, flatten the area I need for a block and make my center indentation for centering the block.
2. I would then cut a couple inches from the top of one of those african blackwood clarinet bell blanks from Woodcraft (that I normally make twig vases out of-the figure on these can be unreal!).
3. I would then turn it round, maybe on a screw chuck, drill through the center on the bottom (which would be hidden with one of my logo medallions), create a recess for my 50mm jaws so that I've got some meat left, and turn it roughly to shape with a nice flare with some extra left for retruing once attached. I envision this flared base to be maybe 3 inches tall or thereabouts.
4. Use 2-part epoxy and my usual 7mm brass rod to center/mate the AB with the bottom of the sapele bowl. I think that a similar procedure I use for attaching a finial to a lid would work here, with a bead on the bottom just barely overlapping two gently-radiused surfaces. I imagine the two mating surfaces will need a half-inch or so of dead-flat around their rims in case the re-truing has to cut in a bit.
My concerns for this project revolve around: a. getting a secure connection with that AB, which of course is an oily rosewood. Would epoxy give a rock-solid join if I scrub the mating surface with acetone? And b. Assuming a solid, fully-cured hold, once I flip it around to lock the chuck jaws into that 50mm recess, I know I will have to retrue everything, so I know I will need tailstock support as long as I can get away with it, so I expect I would completely turn, sand and finish the outside before cutting into the inside.
My biggest concern is cutting into that sapele bowl's interior when I have a fulcrum point of maybe 2 inches diameter at the glue-join supported by that chuck/recess connection I can imagine if they separated at 1000 rpm.
Is this even technically feasible? I know me. This project will haunt me until I just up and do it. Maybe I need a bigger block of wood for the bottom. I appreciate any technical help here in talking me down off the ledge!