Myrtal Wood Bowl

In my last post I had one shot of a bowl that I was turning. Here's a bunch more...

The first two show the chuck I used to mount the bowl onto the lathe, as well as the the bowl itself, before it was finished. I stopped sanding as I was actually getting the punky side thinner than the solid side of the bowl. At least enough that I could feel it with my fingers.



The next shot shows the base and the wood that the chuck was holding onto, while I turned the bowl. That is followed by a plate chuck designed to grab the edges of the bowl, or a platter, so I can turn the base of the bowl away. Finally a shot showing the base turned away. This time I added no decorative cuts to the bottom, I think 'cause I was already frustrated with the bowl and wanted to finish it and get on to another project.


Speaking of finish, these last two shots are the bowl after I put BLO over the bowl to get it a seal on it. I put a thick layer on, waited a few minutes (no patience here) then wiped of the remaining oil. Note the black spec near the edge, this was a worm hole I found after I got a ways into the turning. I also found a couple of dark inclusions in the bowl bottom as I was turning, but I took one completely out and other was reduced to about half it's original size.

All in all I would call this a great learning experience, but not rank it up too high in the quality level.

Enjoy, but be careful of the splinters.

The Latest Project

I had 2 4x8 sheets of plywood in the shop that I had used for garage doors during the construction of my shop. I tried to come up with a use for them that did not need to have a flat piece of ply, as they had curved over the 6 months that they stood as sentinels guarding the front. I finally decided the best use was for storage units, which you see in the attached picture. This did take about 80% of the wood and cleared out a huge space, both visually and physically. Leaning up against the metal rack the plywood separated the shop into 2 parts, one of which was tough to get to.

Once the shelf units were done, I removed the door I was using for temporary storage and collapsed the saw-horses and put them away. For now I have a piece of 1 ½" thick chunk of plywood for the top, but as you see it really is too short. I need to make a 6-8' long counter for the top to place move of my heavy tools. I currently am working out two ideas, laminate some 2x4' to make the top, or split a 4x8 sheet of MDF and laminating the two halves together for the top. I'm leaning towards the latter.

While I was taking pictures I took another one of the table I made to catch offcuts from the table saw, and a Myrtal wood bowl I am turning on the mini-lathe. When I started turning the bowl the support for the tool bar did not fit under the blank, so I had to move it over as I rough turned the wood. The wood also has a punky side, so it is not balanced and the table has a tendency to vibrate (when I started the table bounced.)