TurnedOutRight Woodturning & Woodworking: The Beauty In the Blank

Beauty is More Than Skin Deep

This work is dedicated to "Greg Brenard who passed this week. Greg was a brother-in-law, friend and my wood turning sensei.

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I knew something was out of wack in our universe. It was my wife's ceramic yarn bowl among the many wooden hand turned round things in our house. I had not noticed that she has been using a ceramic one ... for years, she said!
So I'm here in the shop just 14 days to Christmas and I decided to make my wife, who knits profusely, a wooden yarn bowl.

I clomped through the snow out to my shed where there is a stash of wood that has been drying for more than 10 years. I found a blank of burl that seemed perfect for the job.

But what to my wondering eyes should appear....
A series of voids and wandering grains that unveiled the hidden beauty of this piece of wood.
That was the end of the yarn bowl project. The idea put aside while I attended to this beauty!
That's it I will call it "The Beauty"....

Prepare the Tenon

It became obvious as I formed a tenon for the chuck that this piece would be a challenge. A large # of voids were present near the bottom of the blank making me wonder how well it would hold up under the remaining roughing passes. These piece would take patience with light cuts wherever possible.

I found that a pretty smooth cut can be achieved by using a sharp bowl gouge in a nearly "closed" position. In an almost vertical position it sheer cuts the wood on the tools cutting edge producing very fine shavings and a smooth surface.

On this piece I used this tool position to finish the bottom near the tenon as it likely that I will not be able to get close-in once the "beauty" is mounted in the chuck.

Ready for Hollowing?

The Beauty was mounted in the chuck and on the lathe ready for hollowing.

A Hollowing Experience

The hollowing process consisted of repeating:

Drilling with a 2" Forster bit to remove some of the meat
Hollowing with a olander bit up to a 1/4' wall
Semi-finish with round carbide cutter
Finish with my beefy curved scraper

I repeated the above process a few times until I was near the bottom.

Wow not much of the rim left but looks cool!

There are two problems obvious with this piece at this stage:

It is going to be hard to get the inside smooth with all the voids. Reaching in with sandpaper is to dangerous. I will have to use a scraper for the inside..... difficult with all that cutting in space due to voids.
How am I going to turn the beauty around to remove the tenon and finish the bottom???

Work Holding the Beauty

I have to somehow flip and mount the Beauty so I can turn the tenon off and finish the bottom. I also need to mount the finished piece so that I can spray lacquer it while its turning.

I decided that the only way I would be successful was to mount the bowl to a fixture by affixing something to the inside bottom and what rim is left.

I decided to:

Use a piece of PVC pipe mounted in another chuck to reach the bottom.
Use a piece of flat stock with a hole the size of the PVC to make a Rim Plate to attach the rim to the PVC.
Use hot glue since I need to be able to remove the Beauty when done
Use a threaded adapter in the tail stock to align the second chuck while on the lathe and before I remove the first chuck

Drilling hole in Rim Plate using an adjustable hole drill.
This needed to match the PVCs' OD which is not a standard size.

PVC pipe chucked and extends into the Beauty. Glued to the bottom.
The Rim Plate slipped over the PVC and glued to Beauty's rim.

Ready to turn around.
To the right (out of view) is the second chuck in tail stock.
The threaded adapter kept the second chuck on center

Finishing the Bottom

Light cuts with a detail gouge was needed to keep this assembly in tack while cutting the bottom. To make matters worse there were voids in the bottom that caused vibration while cutting.

The need to run pretty high speed to aid in getting a good finish exacerbated the situation.

This is a good time to stand to the side of the piece while turning in case it came off.

The tail stock was left engaged until the very last finishing cut.

Freeing the Beauty

I used a heat gun to carefully soften the hot glue and part the Rim Plate from the rim. When the glue is hot you can wipe it away with a soft cloth. I wondered if the glue stays in the grain and would give me problems with the finish.

Note the glue mark around the rim :(

Finish the Beauty's Exterior

I left the pipe in the Beauty so I could rotate the piece during finishing. I decided to use Deft Satin lacquer as I did not want a high gloss sheen to detract from the grains beauty.

I used 10 coats and sanded (after waiting 24 hrs) below any shiny spots at every 5 coats.