Plates part 3

 More work on my trio of plates last night.  I had to clean up my mess from Sunday as I have another turner coming over tonight and decided to do a little work on the plates.

The piece on the right is pretty much finished.  I'll add another coat or 2 of oil and buff it out but the turning portion is complete.  The 2 on the left still have a bit more turning left to do but I ran out of time.  These are being secured on my lathe with a 4" diameter vacuum chuck.  With my vacuum pump set to pull about 8 PSI (~16" of mercury) there is close to 100 lbs of force securing these to the lathe so I have free access to the bottom.

Punky wood

 Alviti asked me the other day in the comments about punky wood.  It wasn't my intention for this post to focus on punky wood but things took a turn for the worse on this piece.

This is African Sumac I picked up back on June 1st 2010 - http://agoodturndaily.blogspot.com/2010/06/day-287-african-queen.html

There didn't appear to be any major issues on this blank from the outside.

The blank was chainsawed round and a faceplate attached.  I had to do just a bit of trimming to get it to clear the bed of the lathe, final clearance was under 1/16".

Well balanced and safely spinning at 294 RPMs.   This may not sound very fast but at nearly 20" diameter the outer surface is spinning at about 17 MPH.

Here the outside has been roughed and the blank is read to be flipped so I can access the inside.  I didn't think the bark inclusion in the middle of this photo was going to be a problem, it turns out I was wrong, very wrong.

Now the blank has been flipped and is held in a chuck.  The outer edge of the top face of the blank has started to be trued up so I can start coring.  I use my live center with a 60 degree cone on it to support the other end of the blank during coring.

 I skipped the photos of the coring process and went straight to the blank after the inside has been turned true and the walls to a consistent thickness.  The finished diameter of this piece is just under 18 1/2".  Following this step the core that was removed is threaded back onto the lathe, the outside of the core is cut true.

The core was then mounted on the chuck and the center of this piece was cored out.  Near the bottom of the piece the coring went fast and easy and the piece broke free earlier than expected.  Removing the core revealed the problem.  The inside of this piece was too far gone, rotted from the inside out.

A closer view of the decay.  This is extremely punky wood, all structural integrity is gone, the wood can be pulled apart by hand with minimal effort.

The inside of the core cleaned up decent enough, there are some areas that will need to be strenghtened and/or filled but most of the wood is solid.  The medium brown areas are lightly spalted and slightly punky but nowhere near as bad as the rest of the piece.  This ended up at 14" diameter.

Here's the bottom of the piece that was cored from the inside of the blank above.  I put it back on the late hoping that I could turn away the punky wood and get back to good solid wood but that wasn't going to happen.  This piece ended up in the recycling bin just after this photo was taken.  A famous turner once said "Life is too short to turn crappy wood".  I tend to agree.

Misc.

A little more work on a couple different projects today.  I started this set of plates about 3 weeks ago, http://agoodturndaily.blogspot.com/2011/01/demo-and-coring.html.  They're not done yet but I did make some good progress today.  The backs still need to be finished but I'm happy with the progress so far.

I also continued work on my pie.  This and the next 2 photos are actually from yesterday.  The strip were cut from some 1/16" thick pieces of Basswood I picked up at the local hobby store.  At this point they still need some cleanup and some additional fitting.

The inside was turned, sanded, and a coat of oil applied.  This piece of Mesquite turned out to have quite a bit of character, much more than I originally thought.

The bottom was then turned and finished utilizing my vacuum chuck.  As I've stated here in the past I'm a big believer in vacuum chucks.  They don't work on everything but neither do most of the other methods for finished the bottoms (donut and longworth chucks, jumbo jaws, jam chucks, etc).

I still have a bit more fine fitting to do and I still have to decide if I'm going to oil the lattice pieces.  I experimented with burning on some scraps trying to give the strips a baked and browned look but the strips are so thin they burn before they have a chance to brown.

Piece of pie

Longtime readers may remember my "Mesquite Pie" http://agoodturndaily.blogspot.com/2009/09/day-17-mesquite-pie.html.  Hard to believe it's been almost 18 months since I first made that piece.  I started on another one tonight, I might end up putting this one into the Instant Gallery depending on how it turns out. 












The wood ring is parted off the top of the bowl.  It's then trued up and sized down before the recess is cut in the top of the bowl.  A groove is turned into the ring for the lattice pieces to fit into and everything is smoothed and sanded.  I still have to finish sanding inside and out and turn the bottom.  The lattice pieces also need to cut and fitted. 












I also finished turning the Olive burl from the other night.  I still have to finish filling in the cracks on the inside as well as sand and finish.  I hoped toget this set done in time for the DWR but I'm now thinking that's not going to happen.

Instant Gallery

I'm not clear what posessed me tonight but I decided to begin the finishing process of a chunk of Olive burl I've had for the last 8 months.  This was the piece of wood from the "guessing game" entry back on June 9th 2010: http://agoodturndaily.blogspot.com/2010/06/day-295-guessing-game.html and made another appearance on July 22nd entry: http://agoodturndaily.blogspot.com/2010/07/day-338-olive-burl.html.

I've decided I'm going to try to get this set finished for inclusion in the 2011 Desert Woodturning Roundup Instant Gallery.  I have 10 days to get them finished.







Tonight I trued up the outside of all 3 pieces, filled the voids on the outside of the largest piece with coffee grounds and epoxy, and started to turn the inside of the largest piece.  I'm planning to turn them fairly thin, between 1/8" and 3/16". 

"Super Bowl" Sunday

A few more bowls today.  This was the core that was left over from last night.  It was a struggle at times, each of the bowls lost a chunk at some point.  In each case the missing piece was found (not an easy task in all my clutter) and then glued back into place.  I'm not overly concerned with the fact that they were glued back into place, I was planning to fill in some of the voids and bark inclusions with epoxy and coffee grounds anyway.

I ended up with 5 pieces from this blank if you count the blank I cored off the bottom last night.  I also got 5 piece from the other half of the burl but only 1 of those was the full 17" diameter.

There's a ton of stuff going on in this piece, the largest of the set above.  There are several branches, some burl, some punk, some curl, and a bunch of bark inclusions.

After cleaning up 60 gallons of shavings I decided to tackle a couple of pens for a custom order.  I was supposed to have them done a couple of days ago but a number of things got in the way.  The top pen is a Cigar dressd in Bloodwood.  Nothing too fancy but I think it has a good look with the chrome hardware.  I had a minor problem with assembly but was able to get it corrected.  The bottom pen is a Baron wrapped in Oak Burl with crushed turquoise filling in some of the voids.  They'll be delivered to their new owner sometime this week.

Clearing the backlog

I've made more shavings in the last 3 days than in the last 3 months put together.  I had a new student come over Thursday night, I think things went well, he's coming back on Monday.  We turned a small bowl out of Ornamental Yew, only about 8" diameter and 4" deep.  After he left I mounted a small piece my maple burl and turned it round.  It's about 2" diameter and 8" long.  This was a small piece I was able to break off where 2 cuts the previous owner made and were misaligned.

If this piece is any indication there's a ton of figure in the burl, I just have to get to it.

Friday evening I cut and mounted this piece of Mesquite Burl.  This is one half of the Mesquite Burl I got from Boyce Thompson Arboretum late last year.  I used my chainsaw to knock off the corners making it roughly round, about 18" diameter.

Because it's not a circle from point to point it's larger than 18".  I had to chip off some of the bark to get it to clear the bed.  My lathe can swing 20" diameter and this piece ended up with about 1/16" clearance.

The piece is mounted on a 3" aluminium faceplate with 8 #12 X 1.5" screws.  The tailstock is used for additional support and for safety.

 The outside was then roughed out.  There's quite a bit of figure here, not like the eyes of Maple Burl or Box Elder Burl, but clearly not just plain grain.

 I probably could have left this a little bigger but I wanted to get rid of most of the bark.  Some of the sapwood was left but I like the contrast.

I then removed the largest core.  It went reasonably well.  The surface has been moistened with water to enhance the figure.

 The roughout ended up at 17" diameter, slightly less than the 18" I was shooting for.  The core I removed is 14" diameter. 

 This morning I mounted up the 14" core I removed last night and proceeded to turn and core it.  I ended up with 4 pieces from this core, 5 total with the piece above.

Each piece is about 3" smaller than the last.  17" (not shown here), 14", 11", 8", and 5".

 Next I mounted and cored a piece of Olive.  This was a big piece, finished out at 17 1/2" diameter but as you can see from the pic below it has a typical defect for Olive.









Olive trees have a tendency to not be round, they end up growing lobes around the base which result in large voids in the piece.  I could have turned through the voids but then the piece would only be about 10" diameter and 2" deep.

Last I mounted the other half of the Mesquite Burl.  Also about 18" diameter.  A little bit of trimming and it was running very true.

This piece was a little rougher on the outside, it had several branches coming out and was quite a bit deeper than the other half, closer to 10" thick.  I started roughing but quickly determined that it was too deep for the largest diameter but I knew I didn't want to turn away all of that beautiful wood.  As I continued roughing the answer came to me.  I decided to try the technique I used the other day on the plates, coring in from the side rather than from the front.

I turned the bowls down so I had an idean where one would start and the other would end.  I was then able to core off the bottom of the blank and end up with 2 bowls with the maximum 17" diameter.  The core is removed and will be turned and cored in kind.

I ran out of time this evening.  Tomorrow I plan to rough and core the piece on the left.  It should yield 3 or 4 pieces.  I'll also need to spend an hour or 2 doing a cleanup.  The shavings have really started to pile up and I have my student coming back on Monday night.