New Wood to play with

I went to pickup a load of wood today, some seasoned and some fairly green from a chap at work. He had a fantastic pad out in the sticks (pun intended), and after selecting some choice cuts from the woodpile we were off to the unsawn trunks armed with a chainsaw. I now have Oak, Sycamore and some Silver Birch to play with.

Once I got the wood home and tucked away under the bench I thought I must use some of it to make a bowl. I chose a nicely figured lump of oak and the first job was to lop off the corners to make it fit on the lathe.

After knocking off all of the corners I fitted the faceplate and then attached it to the lathe, checking it would turn without hitting anything on the way. It’s a fair old lump!

Then began the job of turning this from a fairly lop-sided lump into something resembling a bowl. As this was my first try at something well out of balance I set the lathe to slow and gingerly progressed and after some time I got to the following bowl shape.

I then had to make a depression in the base that I could then use to mount it on my new purchase (a Robert Sorby Patriot chuck). I then turned the inside of the bowl to a rough size ready for seasoning for a few months before I finish it off. The (semi) finished article is below.

There’s a bit of a crack in the outside of the bowl but I’ll see how bad it it once it’s all dried out (it might add character, but will probably render this part as firewood).

I then went on to some fully seasoned oak and turned another bowl. I only have one picture of that shown below.

I wasn’t happy with the shape of the foot of the bowl to just after taking the above I shaved off most of the rest of the base which looked a load better. Unfortunately when I then turned the inside of the bowl I miscalculated the depth and so ended up with a very thin base replete with a hole. Another bit of firewood – at this rate I’ll need to get a fire to bung all this scrap into!