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I can see why. I’m loathed to buy kiln dried material as it is often so hard and when I have some fresh material from a local tree surgeon. I guess using Cherry is a bit of a wild card - you may be okay but often you won’t 😳

I can see that one might get some quirky, if unpredictable, but charming pieces with warping. I think perhaps my biggest mistake was to include some of the pith area in the bowl. If I hadn’t planned to have a pedestal I could have got a bowl from a shorter (squatter) piece and cut out more of...

I have not worked with Black Cherry before but after my experience I will be cautious of doing so in the future. As a forthcoming present for a relative I ‘first turned’ a small bowl on a stem using some green Cherry wood and then over two days dried it down to about 10% using the microwave...

Lots of good ideas presented, thank you. As I batch cut my logs I can’t rough turn them all in a short space of time so have sealed the end grain faces. Any more cracks I find when I come to turn an individual piece I will deal with at the time with CA or potentially making it a feature of the...

Yes I’ve noticed that purchased blanks are sealed all round but then they have usually been kiln dried and so one doesn’t want them to loose any more moisture. (They are hard enough on ones tools I have found). So I’m thinking that for green or nearly green that just end grain will even out the...

Worth a go when my end seal runs out 😊 Here is the current state of play with just the end grain sealed.

I decided to have a binge on preparing some blanks for bowls and other creations by preparing about 12 items in one sitting, in part because the chainsaw sends chippings and dust everywhere and I only want to clean up once. The wood has been mostly cut down within the last few months. I felt...

Yes I’ve given a few costs of diluted sealer to the area but even though quite hard now here are lots of small holes to fill which I will probably do with CA.

Sounds reasonable but what are you using - diluted regular cellulose or shellac sealer?

I thought that might be an issue. Maybe one should just keep soaking it in the first application till it will take no more and, if it’s runny enough, that will penetrate deep enough for enough cuts. I don’t know what’s in Rustins shellac sealer besides the shellac but the advantage of the...

Yes I use it on joinery around the house and it’s good stuff but am also not sure how suitable it is for lathe based work.

Hi all, I’m working on a big piece of spalted beech (or so my friendly tree surgeon tells me) to make a large bowl and there is quite a lot of spongy decaying wood that I need to stabilise and harden and I’m wondering what the best mix to use is. I also have an elm burr that needs the edges of...

That’s lovely. Im hoping a sycamore one with an acrylic lacquer finish on top of shellac sealer will give some good service. Here the piece of wood I’m working with that needs drying and twice turning.

I have the Hope sanding discs and arbor but had not yet found a way to use them in the context of dealing with end grain issues. Thanks for the tip 😁

The consensus seems to be hand sand those parts and therefore in effect the whole of the inside that way as you can’t skip parts of the circumference while the lathe is turning. I will try the Abranet sanding sheets that won’t, or shouldn’t, leave a residue in the wood and at a lower speed, say...

Hi there, I have a query about end grain and sanding in bowl turning. When I come to sand the bowl, often the end grain areas look worse after sanding than before. To give a specific example, with the aid of the attached pics; pic 1 shows the inside immediately after a ‘finishing’ cut. You...

When you say melamine is that a material or a liquid finish that hardens. Thanks

Makes sense. What finish do you use with the Olive wood?

I’m turning a pestle and mortar on the lathe using some Scots pine logs I acquired and was wondering what the hardest surface finish I can produce so grinding can be done at the bottom of the bowl. To be more precise I’m wondering if buffed cellulose sealer would be harder or softer than cured...

So thank you for all the helpful suggestions and comments 😊