A little Tochi-no-ki Hollow Form

[Stu in Tokyo]

I recently went to a turning meeting, one of the clubs I belong to, the meeting was mainly about how 3-phase inverters work, and maintenance on the Vicmarc VL300 (about 8 of 10 of the members have this lathe, they think I'm odd as I have a DVR 3000 :roll: ).

At lunch time, we all brought out our stuff to sell and or trade with each other, I picked up a NICE piece of this wood, Tochinoki or Japanese Horse Chestnut........ (Clickable pics)



This piece is really striped, or curled or whatever you call it.


and this burled piece

I'll show you a couple of jig kind of things I made


This is just a centering doohickey, I turned a MT#2 on it between centers, then I put it in the headstock, and turned a cup or recess the same basic shape as the Walnut cap I made for the hollow form. This makes gluing the cap in place a LOT easier, centering it etc is easy.


OK here is the nearly finished piece, I have only a coat of sanding sealer on it, it will get a few coats of rattle can lacquer, then the Beall buff like finish, with a nice wax top coat.


While I'm at it, here is the new vacuum chuck I made just for this little hollow form, yes, I'll get more use out of it for sure, but I made it up when I needed it. There is a base piece of threaded wood on it, to attach it to the spindle. The three thick pieces of MDF are glued together, I used THICK CA glue, as I was in a hurry, but normal glue would work fine. Once the glue set, I cut it rounding on my "Grade A silly person" Bandsaw

I then mounted it on the wooden faceplate and turned it round, and then hollowed it out, somewhat like a bowl, but leaving it nice and thick. A hole through to the hole in the spindle was done too.
I sanded it down with #180, then I put a bunch of coats of sanding sealer on it, let it dry, sanded it again, then more sealer until it was smooth inside and out.

Next, I cut a piece out of an old inner tube I had around, and using contact cement, I glued it onto the face of the chuck. Once pounded on with a rubber hammer, I trimmed the rubber gasket with the long tip of my skew.
Came out nice I think.


Here you can see the little hollow form about to get it's bottom finished.......


.....and all done.

Well, I hope you enjoyed that, you will be seeing a lot more of this wood, I got a big chunk of it so........ :wink:

 

[CHJ]

Neatly done Stuart, I'm intrigued by this fixing of the cap on a hollow form, the fact that no one will know it's hollow unless they pick it up seems a little off key.

I'm afraid I am lazy when it comes to tailstock supports and use the ready formed morse taper on my drill chuck and a straight spigot on the centering cup.

I would have tended to put a spigot on the back of the cap to suit the hollow form hole for alignment, I guess the regular use of a vacuum chuck tends to lead you automatically to centering devices associated with the tailstock.

That Horse Chestnut looks like it is reasonably soft in nature, the European variants are almost as soft as lime.

The spalting looks similar to what we get in Sycamore that has dried slowly, unfortunately it can sometimes result in a dirty look to the wood if you do not catch it early enough.

Is this another 'commissioned' piece? If so I can only hope the recipients are a little more worthy of you efforts.

 

[TEP]

Hi Stu, nice pieces of tree wood you got there.

I'm with Chas on this one, please explain your reason for sealing the hollow form. Please take pity on me, I ain't gonna sleep tonight otherwise. :lol:

 

[Stu in Tokyo]

Dunno guys, I just do them that way :roll:

 

[CHJ]

Dunno guys, I just do them that way :roll:

That's a hollow answer Stu. :lol:

 

[NickWelford]

It does save worrying too much about how good the finish on the inside is!