Great tip Aaron! Thanks for the info
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What’s on your lathe?
- Thread starter Rusty Nesmith
- Start date
Hung a scrap of hickory on the lathe, shows a little crotch figure and spalting. Came from a dead tree in my neighbors yard. Finishing the bottom this morning.
Well, I like being prepared. So for bowls I made a small, medium and large sized bowl rests. Small for turning up to 6 plus inches, medium for most other bowls and platters, up to 14 inch or so, and that big one for monster bowls. I don't make them any more though, and just kept enough for personal stash. Brent didn't make the big one. There is not a huge market for them. I have found in years of selling, that bowls over about 14 inch diameter don't sell well. It is a specialized market.
robo hippy
robo hippy
Dave Landers
Beta Tester
Goblet glue-up. Haven't done a goblet in a while - supposed to be getting ready for SWAT, but procrastination is easier 
Ditto!
I ended up ordering the 14 inch "s" which I guess would have been your medium? It's going to be a week at least before I get it so the anticipation is going to be killing me. %@^&# amazon has spoiled me......
Whaaaatttttt!! NO SPARKLES?? (thought the grain was interesting so I left it alone)
Walnut- 11x2 again
Also have another plain one that I didn't bother to post. (early start today)
I'm starting to like the finish I get with klingspor paper. It doesn't seem real durable though. Maybe I'm just too hard on it. Yes, I see the scratch but I wasn't going to redo the whole bowl for one on the bottom side. Call me a slacker I guess
Walnut- 11x2 again
Also have another plain one that I didn't bother to post. (early start today)
I'm starting to like the finish I get with klingspor paper. It doesn't seem real durable though. Maybe I'm just too hard on it. Yes, I see the scratch but I wasn't going to redo the whole bowl for one on the bottom side. Call me a slacker I guess
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Heading out this morning to hopefully pick up some free apple wood!
Made this cup out of Walnut. Started with a good size piece and by the time I got passed all the cracks I ended up with a shotglass! Lol.
Made this cup out of Walnut. Started with a good size piece and by the time I got passed all the cracks I ended up with a shotglass! Lol.
Love all this walnut-one of my favorite woods, and you guys do it justice!
Canarywood.....still very wet from DO application.....not sure exactly where this piece came from, but according to the wood database, it comes from Panama down to Brazil. Very easy to turn.
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@Dave Landers beautiful work! And like Neil mentioned, cool turned hood.
@odie lovely, as usual. Really being out the best in that Canarywood.
@odie lovely, as usual. Really being out the best in that Canarywood.
Black Cherry calabash to replace an earlier failure. It’s slightly punky, which isn’t ideal, but I’ve found that it takes on a cool striped pattern when fumed with ammonia. So that’s what I’m going to do.
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Home owner advertised free apple would. Just come and get. Got a good haul. Grabbed all the ones that weren't cracked and split. I already processed them and sealed the ends.
One piece was fairly dry so I turned a quick bowl. Going to give it to the home owner when finished.
Waiting for oil to dry for final buffing.
Waiting for oil to dry for final buffing.
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ebonized oak hollow form (about 8" diameter)
Nice Peter. Did you use liming wax to fill the pores, or something else?
Trying to use up the turning pieces from the walnut that I cut down live in september 2023 the bark on this one definitely would not have stayed on so I am thinking that I will try the softened method that Lyle Jamieson showed on a photo gallery post, but that will have to waite a few weeks for the piece to dry. The bowl measures 16.5" from wing to wing X 7" high X 3/16" wall thickness and weighs about 746Grams with the dovetail tenon.
The 3/4" shaft has a burred scraper mounted at a 45 Degree angle and it did a reasonably good job of refining the inside surface except in the bottom of the bowl.
The piece is now in a brown paper bag starting the drying process so if I weigh it tomorrow it will likely have lost a substantial amount of moisture.
The 3/4" shaft has a burred scraper mounted at a 45 Degree angle and it did a reasonably good job of refining the inside surface except in the bottom of the bowl. The piece is now in a brown paper bag starting the drying process so if I weigh it tomorrow it will likely have lost a substantial amount of moisture.
Put on another piece of apple. Mounted it opposite of the last one. Going to try and keep the natural edge on it.
I got a great finish off of the tool but seem to be screwing it up with sanding. Using a hand drill with the lathe spinning at 250. End grain keeps getting blocky and losing the grain pattern. It took lots of hand sanding to get rid of it.
I got a great finish off of the tool but seem to be screwing it up with sanding. Using a hand drill with the lathe spinning at 250. End grain keeps getting blocky and losing the grain pattern. It took lots of hand sanding to get rid of it.
Correction the weight of the piece on the 16th was 743.2G and on the 17th it had dropped to 688.3G and no checks have appeared.
Spalted Pecan calabash, around 9.5” diameter. I roughed this out a while ago, but have putting off final turning as it was pretty punky. A little bit of shellac work and reliance on my new high grit CBN wheels (alluding to a recent thread) made finish turning manageable with relatively minimal tearout.
Little cottonwood burl bowl last night.....
About 6x3....as usual, wet with fresh application of DO.
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About 6x3....as usual, wet with fresh application of DO.
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Odie:
Looks pretty fancy for cottonwood! Well done!
Cheers.
Barry W. Larson
Calgary, Alberta, Canada eh!
Looks pretty fancy for cottonwood! Well done!
Cheers.
Barry W. Larson
Calgary, Alberta, Canada eh!
Finished project. Natural edge Apple bowl.
A departure in style for you. Don't see much cottonwood here and what I have seen is pretty plain vs the great look you have here.
Yes, for sure, Gerald.....cottonwood can be very plain grained......but, cottonwood burl is a treasure of dark/light, bark inclusions, and chatoyance in the clear areas. This one was from the west coast.
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Here's another cottonwood burl bowl I completed recently....also from the west coast:
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Olive wood. This is a first for me. A limb was trimmed many years ago and the trunk continued to grow around the amputated branch. I started turning and realized that I just might be able to save this "live edge" so I doused it with thin CA. I have no idea if this is going to work or not. If anyone has done something like this and has advice I would be glad to have it. The real test will be when I start to hollow.
Jay
Jay
Todays project was just for fun to see if it worked. Not on the lathe but definitely for the lathe.
Wife's cousin has a farm with beehive. He gave me a bag of bee's wax
Set up a double boiler on the grill.
Melted it all down
Strained thru 4 layers of cheese cloth and put into little paper cups. Presto wax for my projects.
Was a fun thing to do on a humid rainy day while the other projects cured. All set to try it on the next food safe project!
Wife's cousin has a farm with beehive. He gave me a bag of bee's wax
Set up a double boiler on the grill.
Melted it all down
Strained thru 4 layers of cheese cloth and put into little paper cups. Presto wax for my projects.
Was a fun thing to do on a humid rainy day while the other projects cured. All set to try it on the next food safe project!
Got this small Butternut Hickory bowl on the lathe, as it was turned before I had a wood chuck, I did use screws to hold it on a faceplate, 3 screw holes are evidence of this.
hold it now used a piece of scrap wood turned round and CA glued it onto the bowl, then held the bow in the Jumbo jaws, flattened the top of the bowl and then the bottom as well after I had glued the tenon on.
Had to center the bowl and turn the tenon to be held in a Oneway Talon chuck, then returned both inside and outside, sanded and wiped one coat of PTO (Polymerized Tung Oil) on, will get another coat in a day or two..
I will have to remove the tenon and fill the small screw holes as good as I can, then turn and sand the bottom.
hold it now used a piece of scrap wood turned round and CA glued it onto the bowl, then held the bow in the Jumbo jaws, flattened the top of the bowl and then the bottom as well after I had glued the tenon on.
Had to center the bowl and turn the tenon to be held in a Oneway Talon chuck, then returned both inside and outside, sanded and wiped one coat of PTO (Polymerized Tung Oil) on, will get another coat in a day or two..
I will have to remove the tenon and fill the small screw holes as good as I can, then turn and sand the bottom.
Cool thinking about that process Leo. How old was the roughed bowl?
Nice work, and creative thinking about work holding to get from a faceplate to a scroll chuck. How about 3 small turned and or shaped feet to disguise the screw holes - maybe of contrasting wood?
Cheers.
Barry W. Larson
Calgary, Alberta, Canada eh!
Installed the new band-saw tires and finished cutting out the blanks that I started on last week.
Don't tell Mrs. Boss, but I borrowed her hot plate and a large pan. The pan saw a lot of use when we had hungry kids at home but lives in the utility room now.
Heat water in the pan to 120-140 degrees. It's ready about the time you see little wisps of steam. DON"T BOIL THE TIRES. Let them simmer for 5 minutes. I pre-streched them by hooking them around the lathe tailstock and adding elbow grease.
Spring clamps to hold the tire in place while fitting around the wheel. After the tire is in place and the clamps are removed, a small screwdriver or dowel inserted between the tire and the wheel and held in place while the wheel is rotated helps to even out the tension on the tire
Installed new blade and used the Snodgrass method to align the bearings. Works like a champ...
Finished up the remaining Hays County slabs I started last week.
Don't tell Mrs. Boss, but I borrowed her hot plate and a large pan. The pan saw a lot of use when we had hungry kids at home but lives in the utility room now.
Heat water in the pan to 120-140 degrees. It's ready about the time you see little wisps of steam. DON"T BOIL THE TIRES. Let them simmer for 5 minutes. I pre-streched them by hooking them around the lathe tailstock and adding elbow grease.
Spring clamps to hold the tire in place while fitting around the wheel. After the tire is in place and the clamps are removed, a small screwdriver or dowel inserted between the tire and the wheel and held in place while the wheel is rotated helps to even out the tension on the tire
Installed new blade and used the Snodgrass method to align the bearings. Works like a champ...
Finished up the remaining Hays County slabs I started last week.
I brought back a couple of green-turns from my Ellsworth class that are now dry enough to sand and finish including this natural edge cherry piece. And thanks to my mechanical engineer son, we got my new PM Swing-Away aligned and working. It took some fiddling with the set screws, a lot of tapping with a hammer, marking with DyeKem, and checking with a straight-edge, but we finally got it there. What finally did the trick was to loosen the tail-stock cam nut about 1/16" of an inch, and then it slid right into place on the rails. I expect this will be a total game-changer for my back. I also found it helpful to pull it back a little farther and stabilize it some with a stout bungee cord. I hope this helps anyone thinking about this PowerMatic add-on.
Worked on a piece of apple today.
Processed a couple of small logs that I picked up while visiting a friends ranch.
Spalted chinaberry crotch - 5"
Black walnut - 6"
Spalted chinaberry crotch - 5"
Black walnut - 6"
Quartersawn White Oak calabash WIP, around 6.5”d and 3.5” deep.
The slight concave on the edge is a pleasing attractive form but I don't understand how a round bowl made from a solid piece of wood can be termed quarter sawn.
The table base in this picture has quarter sawn veneer applied to the straight cylindrical portions of the column and the steam bent apren on the table top was made from quarter sawn boards along with the quarter sawn veneer on the table top.
Hi Don, thanks. First off, that's a really nice table. The animal figures on the legs are striking.
I'm referring to quartersawn in the sense of how I harvested the blank. The log this came from was pretty hefty, so I was able to chainsaw some nice chunks where the grain would run straight through the bowl. As opposed to plainsawn where the grain would arc through the bowl. Here's a work-in-progress shot of the interior of this bowl, and then another finished one that is plain sawn.
Obviously the grain is oriented very differently in each bowl. I get the gist of what you're saying (I think) in that something round will not display quarter sawn grain on all surfaces, but I think my terminology is still correct (you’ve been in the game a lot longer than I have, so correct me if I’m wrong). If I have a quartersawn board and I make a bowl/platter from it, does it cease being quarter sawn when the turning begins?
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