End grain - wet or dry wood

I have seen the video. He has the wood mounted with the grain parallel to the lathe axis as in normal spindle turning. Are you end grain hollowing your bowls?

BillR

A skew is what I would use on the outside of a box but boxes are usually turned in spindle orientation while bowls have grain (usually) at 90* to the lathe bed. Boxes are also generally smaller. If the bowl was a small endgrain one then no problem, but with what you are describing as a changing grain pattern, I assumed the bowl was turned in the usual fashion.

No, I have them mounted normally. Go back and take a look at the video. The top of the lid is curved, not unlike the bottom of the small bowls I am turning so, with each rotation of the blank, he is presented twice with an endgrain situation.

Leo, Looking at your page, I noticed "acer negundo" on one of the pictures, but it looks like a picture of carob (Ceratonia siliqua). There is no way that red wood is a boxelder maple.

On the other hand, I have turned a LOT of carob, from at least four or five different carob trees, and that red stuff there sure looks exactly like carob.

Hi Mark

Thanks for looking at my Website, and the response.

Mark I have to inform you that to my chagrin, Carob trees do not grow in this part of Canada or any other part of Canada that I am aware of.

It (the Ceratonia siliqua, a single species) does come from the Eastern Mediterranean and requires a hot dry summers to do well, and is only marginally frost hardy, so we have the hot summer for a short while, but the frost is a little to harddy ;-)) up here, last night it was well below 0.F.

You can have my "Manitoba Maple", if I can have your "Carob tree", only the woody part, not the weather though.

Have you considered the possibility that the wood has already started to rot? I have had this happen with both birch and maple. The wood looked good until I started roughing it out. There was just enough decay starting that the end grain would never turn clean. If that is the case then it might not be worth using it for anything but fire wood.

Hi Ted

Did you have a look at the shavings that the chainsaw made cutting that wood ??, try doing that from rotting wood. No it wasn't rotten, and yes it did have some soft areas on the outside end, in my experience the Acer Negundo is never a hard wood to start with, and when you find the red coloration, there is some bug infestation, and quite often the wood is starting to rot or some parts are, also I don't care for the smell, but that hasn't stopped me from turning it, but I had/have so much wood already that all that wood was donated to be raffled off for the wood turners club. made for some nice Christmas presents.

Have fun and take care Leo Van Der Loo

Hi Bill, I like the other commentors, tried "termiting".

Man was I shocked into intimidatioin. That sucker will grab in a heartbeat.

I studied on the design of this tool and made my own, finding a carbide insert shaped like the business end of the termite. The trouble was keeping the tool at a proper approach. If you got too close to the corner where the bottom and the wall meet, watch out.

I went on to make scraping inserts for my homemade tool, that were ground differently. They had only a slight "scoop" on top, and the thickness was parallel with the wall so it would only let me go so deep. I also added an outrigger to my tool shaft to stabalize the tool so it would not tilt or roll to one side.

This produces a great finish on my end grain bottoms.

The bit is a flat top piece that is rounded, but at the cutting in, I ground a slight angled cut. Wish I could draw what I am saying, but it works like regular scapers do. But inside a bowl or cup, you dont have room to angle a scraper handle way down, so that angle is ground in to the tool bit. So the tool and bit are held horizontal, but you still get a good approach angle.

The big thing is it stopped catches while cutting fine, smooth shavings eliminating tear.

If you can get a tool designed for this, f> I have been roughing out bowls with green wood and am having a tough