First it was there, then it was gone

I would make a platter. Have in the past, anyway.

Before you make such drastic decisions, let me say that there are some "patterns" which are patterns of moisture only. You should evaluate carefully when turning a wet piece before serious modification. Wet the whole thing and see if it looks as gorgeous. If not, down to the planned depth.

====>Prometheus. You are addressing the problem from the wrong direction. It is apparent that you are not becoming one with your blank prior to addressing it with your chisel. If you would perform the proper meditation and ceremony before the chips/curls start flying, you would be aware of the blank's inner beauty and what it desires to be! Please try to be more sensitive to its longings, for only then can you transcend reality and mundane bowls and platters and produce spiritually beautiful works. And remember, cleanliness is next to godliness, so don't spare the LDD! I understand this is Arch's technique! *G*

Leif

Hi Kevin

Yes it happens, I have run into knotholes, burly wood, nails, worms, grubs, parts of the aforementioned , etc., the thing is you can usually tell a lot of how and what is in the wood before you get that far, (no not always, but) it pays to have a good look before you even start cutting up the tree, and then the blank, still I have chain sawed slabs off of lathe mounted blanks, to make a platter out of or to get rid of a bad part, also I don't rough turn , hollow or finish turn without stopping often, even if it is only to adjust the tool rest and I always have a look at the wood, after all it is the woods grain, color, etc. that makes turning wood a joy. So yes, I would say slow down and enjoy the look and color and grain of the wood, smell the wood (sometimes) and enjoy the shaping of something out of a rough chunk of wood.

Kev> So there I was the other night turning a bowl. As it was spinning away, I

Sadly, yes. One of the first things I turned on my lathe was a lamp made of laminated bird's eye maple. The lamp turned out awfully nice, but those bird's eyes that I liked so much were nowhere to be seen. (Duh)

I do stop the lathe fairly frequently to take a look at the grain, but if you're not going for some specific effect, it's probably not all that necessary as long as the form is pleasing. OTHO, if you don't want to stop the lathe, but want to see the grain (and you're not an epileptic) you could put a strobe light overhead *G*

Hey! Don't pin that on *me*! I always make my regular sacrifices to the WW gods. :)

Box elder will do that to you a lot... seems to alternate between normal, bugly and spectacular... I was about 1/3 of the way into hollowing a box elder bowl a few months ago and hit a "vein" of bright red... not wanting to take the chance of turning it into shavings and losing the color, I reshaped the outside to make a smaller, shallower bowl...

I stop often to clear shavings, check tightness of tool rest, etc... but mostly to look at the wood... I love grains, color, defects, figure, whatever... to me, that's part of what makes wood beautiful and every turning unique..

mac

Please remove splinters before emailing

Well, when you think about it, the problem is no different than when you do flat work. For the display cased I build (for the wooden ship guys, etc.) I pick my wood and try to work the grains and patterns into the the case.

But not all of it makes it as it gets cut off. The same with a large flaw that looks really spectacular; it may look great to me, but because it is outside the dimension of the final product it will wind up on the shop floor instead of in the project.

Same thing with turning. How many times did I buy or swap for a blank that had some really neat features looking at me from the anchorseal only to turn them all off? Hmmmm.... seems to me too many.

Robert

On Wed, 8 Jun 2005 9:45:39 -0700, Kevin wrote (in message ):

by coring out the inside of the bowl you could have the larger bowl and a smaller bowl with the pretty grain from the same piece of wood.

Which could possibly affect you even if you are not an epileptic.

"Don't go into the light Carol Anne!"

Kevin -

I have that a lot... first the wood is on the lathe spinning and being shaped beautifully, and then for no apparent reason, it makes a "POP" sound and there is no more wood in the chuck. only an empty chuck.

first it was there, and then it was gone...

pretty common on my side...

Rob