Start to finish

Palo Verde burl I picked up about 6 weeks ago. I pulled this out of a local firewood pile. I don't normally use Palo Verde but I can't pass up a burl.












I roughed it out Sunday morning. It's still about 3/4" thick and quite heavy, both because of the thickness and the water content.











There's some significant spalting and a few bug holes. I came across several live grubs while turning. They were likely Palo Verde beetle larvae and those that didn't get decapitated during the turning process probably died when I ran it through the microwave.









This piece is actually fairly large, roughly 10" diameter and 8" tall. Now it will sit on a shelf for 6 months or more. I'll check on it in a couple of weeks. If its drying fast I may try to get it done in time for my next show, almost exactly a month away.









Tonight I put another chunk of California Pepper on the lathe. I had already rounded it to a cylinder a couple weeks ago.











It only took five minutes to get the outside shaped and the tenon formed. After putting it in a chick I drilled a pilot hole to the finished depth and started hollowing.











After hollowing I reversed it and jam chucked it to finish the bottom. Total Tim elapsed was just a hair over 45 minutes. I'm pretty sure with a bit more practice and if I pushed myself I could get it down to 30 minutes.

It's now gone through a couple of microwave cycles and will dry overnight. I expect significant warping.

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Warped and twisted

 The first 3 pieces from my California Pepper haul.  This piece is a calabash style bowl turned end grain less than 1/8" thick and allowed to warp.  Roughly 6" X 7"

 Another end grain piece.  Also roughly 1/8" thick and allowed to warp.  Roughly 6" X 5"

This one was turned side grain, it was left a little thicker, but still under 1/4".  Roughly 6" X 6".

Work in progress

About 10 days ago I got ahold of a bunch of wood that I later identified as California Pepper.  I finally got a chance to do some turning yesterday and these 2 hollow forms are the result.  Both were turned green to finish, something I don't normally do.  I thought these might warp as I had some warping issues with some California Pepper I turned 5 or 6 years ago.  In this photo both pieces have been off the lathe for an hour or so and have been put through 3 microwave cycles (45 seconds on high each time).  They've been wetted to approximate how they'll look when finished.

This is how they look today after being left out to dry overnight.  Major warpage, slightly more than I expected but that's not really all that surprising.  Now I have another issue, I didn't do much sanding because the wood was still green.  Now that it's so severely warped I can't do very much sanding.  So I'm considering investing in some sandblasting equipment.  Anybody have any experience with sandblasting wood?

Madrone tube

Another chunk of Madrone burl tonight.  I think I have 4 left after tonight. 

Tonight I wanted to turn a thin wall tube.  I didn't get it as thin as the piece from yesterday (which I thought was a bit too thin).  I wasn't sure how this was going to work out as the blank was only secured with a bit of superglue on the waste block - see above.  The first half was hollowed with my bowl gouge, the second half I used my straight boring bar with a round scraper tip.

As I progressed deeper and deeper and then widened out the bottom end the glue surface area became smaller and smaller.  In the end there was only about 1/16" thickness left on the wall at about 2 1/2" diameter.  Very little left holding it in place but strong enough that I had to part it free.

2 trips to the microwave at 90 second each has the piece twisted and warped pretty nicely. 

The top end warped nicely.  The bottom end didn't move quite as much because it was just a little bit thicker.  Now I have an idea in my head for the next piece.  Now we'll see if I can get it done.  I plan to do a test run with some scrap wood to see if it's going to work like I hope.