Saved from the fire

[frugal]

After my last bowl seemed like such a success I decided to try a more interesting (read difficult) shape. This piece is once again a nice looking piece of ash that was saved from the firewood pile at a reenactment event (I am such a cheapskate).

I wanted to try to make more of an ogee shape in order to try and improve my gouge control. what I ended up with was this:



/



There was supposed to be a foot on this. It started off well, but the wood for the foot was very soft and must have been sap wood. It disintegrated when I tried to shape it, so it all came off unfortunately.

The outside of the bowl certainly taught me that the way I present the gouge determines the angle of the cut, it was a bit strange getting used to moving the handle hand in order to change the direction of the cut.

 

[wizer]

I will say it again, you're a natural. Good shape, good finish. I think it looks better for not having a foot. If you were feeling a little braver you could have made the bottom slightly more rounded so it 'wobbled', which is an 'arty' thing to do. I think it would have suited this well, but is obviously less practical.

 

[frugal]

I will say it again, you're a natural. Good shape, good finish. I think it looks better for not having a foot. If you were feeling a little braver you could have made the bottom slightly more rounded so it 'wobbled', which is an 'arty' thing to do. I think it would have suited this well, but is obviously less practical.

The foot came off quite abruptly shall we say. :? The bowl was being held between a cylinder of wood and the live centre in the tailstock. I have not got good enough to make jam chuck that will keep the bowl attached without needing the tailstock. So I was going to turn the foot and then pare the tenon down until there is a small enough amount that I can clean it up with a chisel.

Unfortunately it gave way too soon, so I had to clean up the bottom with a nice sharp bevel edged chisel off of the lathe.

 

[Jonzjob]

That is a lovely bowl and I am afraid that I don't subcrribe to "á la mode" and the instability it is talking of today. For me, it's a bit like tatoos, easy to put on, but what do you do when it goes out of fashon. I can imagine the foot on it and I don't think that it has suffered much without it. Did you cut the outside or inside first? With a bowl like that I always eithr=er mount it on a screw chuck or hot glue onto a wood faced face plate and do the outside first. I find it easier then to follow on the inside.

But, I do the opposite with goblets.

Ash is not the easiest wood to get a good finish on, but you have got it right for me! I like the lip. When I saw the first photo, I thought it was going to be heavy and it was a lovely surprise!

As a matter of interest, the next time I am up on Froster Hill, Selsley Common or Cam Long Down flying a radio controlled glider is not going to be my first time and perhapse not my last either? Next time you are up there and see model fliers, go and say helo, they are a great bunch of blokes and tell them that John the Soar Bits in France says hello too!

 

[stevebuk]

Deja Vu here, have done exactly the same shaped bowl today but i am considering doing some pyrography on it as an experimental piece.
Lovely wood frugal and nicely turned too, i dont recall seeing the dimensions of it though.

 

[Ad de Crom]

Frugal, if I may say a nice experience with making this shaped bowl, a bit unusual shape for a bowl, but like you said good for gouge control.
I have no problems with the shape of the bowl, it's refreshing to see an other bowl shape. Well executed, good save (from the fireplace).
Really don't understand why people put such nice wood into the pile for firewood.
Very well done.
Ad

 

[frugal]

Deja Vu here, have done exactly the same shaped bowl today but i am considering doing some pyrography on it as an experimental piece.
Lovely wood frugal and nicely turned too, i dont recall seeing the dimensions of it though.

It is 7.5" in diameter at the widest point and 2.5" high.

Although the lathe can cope with 9" diameter bowls[1], the wood needed the faces cleaned up or it would have been too out of balance for my little lathe to cope with, and the maximum depth of cut on my bandsaw is only 8"

Although the wall on this one is a little thinner than the first one I am still nervous about taking out the side of the bowl. As the rim was thicker than the side walls I could not use the standard calipers I have. I will have to invest in, or make a set of those double ended calipers you can read from the outside.

[1] If the bonus was not going to pay off the overdraft I would already have bitten Mark Sanger's hand off for his Hegner, for the extra capacity alone.

 

[frugal]

Did you cut the outside or inside first? With a bowl like that I always eithr=er mount it on a screw chuck or hot glue onto a wood faced face plate and do the outside first. I find it easier then to follow on the inside.

I screwed it onto a faceplate and started by truing it up with the tailstock supprting it, and then putting a tenon on the end. Then I shapped the outside. Once I had shaped and finished the outside I took it off the faceplace and attached it to the scroll chuck by the tenon I had previously made. At this point the rim was about 3/8" thick as I was sure I was going to get a huge catch when doing the inside.

Then I hollowed out the inside which nicely gets ride of the screw holes that the face plate used. the sides just go straight down and then curve in at the bottom in a U shape rather than following the outside profile. I then finished the inside and took it off of the scroll chuck.

To try and shape the bottom I put a cylinder of wood in the scroll chuck with a slightly domed end and then placesd the bowl over it and brought the tailstock up to support it. The aim was to clen up the tenon and make a nice foot for the bowl, but the wood was too soft.

But, I do the opposite with goblets.

Grrr... don't talk to me about hollowing goblets. After my two sucesses with bowls I tried a goblet in Apple last night. Total disaster despite doing everything that Richard Raffan says to do

Ash is not the easiest wood to get a good finish on, but you have got it right for me! I like the lip. When I saw the first photo, I thought it was going to be heavy and it was a lovely surprise!

The lip was serendipity As I said, I left the lip square and 3/8" thick on the expectation that when I hollowed out the middle I was bound to get a catch that meant I needed to clean up the rim, so I left plenty spare. In the end I did not get any catches, so I thinned it at the outside and left full thickness in the middle and just rounded over the inner edge of the lip to soften it.

As a matter of interest, the next time I am up on Froster Hill, Selsley Common or Cam Long Down flying a radio controlled glider is not going to be my first time and perhapse not my last either? Next time you are up there and see model fliers, go and say helo, they are a great bunch of blokes and tell them that John the Soar Bits in France says hello too!

I look out over Cam Peak and the Long Down from the other side of the valley whenever I do the washing up. Next time you are in the area PM me and pop over for a cuppa

 

[frugal]

I decided to have a single thread to keep track of my turning attempts rather than create a new thread for each one.

I went out to the workshop again today to have another crack at hollowing the end of a goblet.

After a number of different approaches at hollowing out. I think I was happiest with the Mike Darlow method the best of the various different methods in the books I have (serves me right for trying to learn everything from books rather than finding another human being to talk to). after a while I got something that resembled the inside of a goblet (admittedly the goblet was about 2 inches shorted than when I started )

I decided to make the walls a bit thinner than I am normally comfortable with (the bowls have been 5-8mm thick), this is about 1 - 2mm thick. the stem was interesting as once I shaped the stem I realised that there was so much whipping that I could not finish the outside of the bowl properly. This is why you can see a bit of patterning at the top of the bowl, the spindle gouge bounced a bit as the walls got thinner.

The only things I am disappointed about are the patterning at the top of the bowl and the fact that the base is about 1/8 wider than the bowl and 1/4 too high.

I am please that I managed to get the hollowing fairly smooth and that I can just about see my fingers through that walls of the goblet. I am also amazed that the stem held up in one piece.

The final piece is 5.5" high and 2.5" in diameter from a piece of apple that was saved from the firewood pile.

 

[wizer]

right I've got the 'ump now, how do I ignore this thread???

:lol: Very nice work mate

 

[Paul.J]

That looks really elegant,from the stem up
Really nice shape to the stem and bowl.
Not sure which method you used but you have to work and finish from the top down in stages.Leaving the bulk in the bottom.
Really good for a first attempt i think

 

[Bodrighy]

That is really elegant. Getting a good goblet shape isn't easy at all. One tip. The base should be roughly 2/3rds the diameter of the bowl to be in proportion. I was told that and cynic that I am measured the wine glasses in the cupboard and they were all those dimensions. Otherwise that is one pretty goblet.

Pete

 

[stevebuk]

lovely goblet frugal, must agree with pete about the foot though, but a great effort.. :lol:

 

[CHJ]

OK, late on the scene again with comments but the bowl and stem certainly show good clean lines, well done, like the others though the base looks a little too wide and heavy for me, well finished though for all that.

 

[Jonzjob]

I agree with the comments made in that the base is a bit heavy. If you actually did the stem and then did the outside of the bowl then you were really living dangerously! If you do it that way then you could always bring the tail stock up, put a wad of papre towel over a live centre and support the bowl that way. Just don't put any more pressure on the tail stock thatn is needed to hold it steady though..

Nice shape and very elegant and using the tail stock you could possibly trim the base?

 

[frugal]

I fully agree that the base is too wide and too thick, but I only realised that after I had parted it off

I cut and finished the inside of the bowl, then cut the outside of the bowl and the stem. Only then did I realise that I could not effectively sand and polish the outside of the bowl at there was too little support.

 

[Bodrighy]

With goblets it's easy to support by stuffing the bowl with tissue and bringing the tailstock up. Bring it in until it just starts turning and you will find that it will support well. Don't go too tight mind as it will bend the stem.



These were all done that way, the two at the front have 4mm stems and were fine as long as you are gentle with the skew

pete

 

[Shay Vings]

I made one rather like this but with a more pronounced downturned rim. I thought it was quite clever until a family member picked it up and said "its just like the sick bowls they give you in hospital".

Although I should have given her a slap, the trouble is she's dead right and I can't stand the sight of the bl**** thing now so it stays in the practice pieces box.

 

[frugal]

Another attempt, this time a piece of spalted beech that a friend gave me. He had roughed it to a cylinder a couple of years ago and then lost interest in turning and said that he was never going to finish it.

This time I decided that I was going to have a plan and see if I could follow it. I needed to take a fair bit of the wood off when I looked at it as some of the wood had gone from spalted to rotten (I figure any part that I can push my thumb into is not much use for turning). So when I got rid of the rotten bits it went from a 6" diameter blank to a 4.5" diameter. I looked at what I had left and came up with this:



What I had left said Vase to me, so I thought I would have a go. I am not brave enough to try any kind of hollow form, so it was going to be a quite wide necked vase. The final dimensions were to be 4.75" high and 4.25" in diameter at the widest point. Of course no plan survive first contact with the enemy.

The first thing I had to do was take it off of the drive centre and put it on the face plate (every time I try to do end grain hollowing on the chuck it just rips the wood out of the chuck, so now I go straight to the face plate and 1.5" screws). Of course once I put it on the face plate it was slightly out of true, so I had to rough it down to a cylinder again, which of course meant that the diameter was now only 4". Which of course meant that my nicely cut out templates were scrap paper as they were bigger than the available wood...

Oh well, I started to crack on with the hollowing and I was going to use the pattern as a guide only. The wood was horrible to cut. I am not sure if it was because it was spalted and very dry, but it just came out in chips and lumps and I found it really hard to get any kind of smooth finish. It did not help that with the size of the piece I could not get the rest angled into the area I was hollowing out, the underside of the rest would interfere with the rim of the vase if I tried. This meant that the tools were pretty much as far extended as I could get them, which meant that they chattered and bounced all over the place. So the inside is a bit of a dogs dinner I am afraid.



The outside was not too bad, although I am not that keen on the transition at the widest point, it is too sharp.





The base is about 1/2" narrower than I was planning as when I was undercutting the base to ensure that it was stable when it stood I got a catch which meant that I had to re-cut and refinish the lower inch of the vase. In doing so I could not get the two finished areas to blend very well.

Final dimensions 4.75" high and 3.5" in diameter. Finished with Shellac sanding sealer and clear Briwax.

All in all I think I will stay away from hollowing any deeper than a goblet until I have some more experience and some more appropriate tools.

 

[wizer]

I really like the shape Frugal. 8) I have done something similar myself when I first got the Roly tool. But I went through the side :evil:

It still Irks me you're so bloody good. I'm not reading this thread any more :lol: