The first part of this year has been a bit hectic, but I’ve managed to squeeze in a bit of lathe time in between other stuff. So here’s a recap of the last couple months…
This is some black walnut that I got from a friend of my mom (I’ll take free wood from anyone!). The darkness of the wood really surprised me. I guess I thought it only got that dark when it had finish applied. It’s beautiful wood, but actually gives you an unpleasant taste. Guess I need better face protection!
Here’s the same walnut bowl in different light and maybe slightly drier. I actually got three rough turned bowls from the bit of walnut I had (the other two are posted below). Despite trying to dry them slowly, they have started cracking. I’m trying to stabilize them with CA glue, but TBD if this will work 🙁
Some more of the bowls I turned in the spring (the oak I got from my brother’s yard) are ready for finish turning. You can see that one had a crack that blew apart when I was turning. If I had been able to find the piece, I perhaps could have glued it back, or done something creative …
… but this is what the workspace looks like after a bit of turning. I wasn’t going to find that chip.
I’ve been doing a bunch of live edge bowls, with varying success. Here are the best ones, with a still wet coat of oil on them. From the bottom: butternut, walnut, maple, cherry, maple. The unfinished on off to the side is also cherry
Two more walnut. These are probably about 9′ diameter. The lighter colored stack are more oak from spring ready to be finished. You’ll see the middle one in just a minute.
This is some silver maple I got from a tree that fell on the barn, RV and house across the street. Silver maple is softer than sugar maple (the other kind of maple I’ve turned). Again, I had it drying in wet shavings like usual, but wow! This was not salvageable. They’re sitting next to the fire pit as I type. I don’t know if the cracks are typical of silver maple, or if the tree was stressed from falling. Its a shame, too. These were nice big bowls–at least 10″ diameter.
This is the finished oak I mentioned a couple photos ago. i am really, really proud of this one–the shape, the thinness of the walls…
…the trickery to have no foot.
More free wood. Maple from our friend, John. I think this might be silver maple again. I cut this limb up into 6″ sections (you can see my chalk marks). I cut each segment in half for 12 blanks.
Here are the 12 rough turned bowls. For this project, I was trying to make them all as similar as I could. I’d love to try to get some “matched” sets out of them. The rough are all 140-150mm diameter and 45mm tall. Now lets hope I have better luck with drying this maple than the last.
