Ironwood (Lignum Vitae)

In message , John writes

Well I finally got to turn the Lignum.

This time I found that I just drilled out the centre, of one of the recesses, an inserted a pin chuck to hold it while I turned a dovetail on the other side.

Now the for post-mortem on turning Lignum Vitae

1, make the dovetail deep if your going to use one. As Lignum is so hard, it doesn't compress like most other woods so your grip appears to be less . With my shallow dovetail, I found on 3 occasions I had to pick the piece up from the floor. 2, When turning, gouges were out, and scrapers were little better. I found I was using the corner of the parting tool as a cutter, bit like on a metal lathe. ( Maybe I should have moved the wood to the metal lathe and worked there ) 3, There was a three- way crack in the centre of the old bowling wood, which I found then hollowing, and they just happened to radiate to the outside. Part of the reason the scraper was out as it would catch and provide enough leverage to tear the turning from the chuck. After experiments with even the lightest touch of the scraper, it could still provide enough of a catch, I put this down to the area of scraper leading edge contacting the crack in one go, the parting tool was taking only a few 100ths at a time, at a small contact point so less forces involved.

1. There was a lovely aroma from the wood, smelling almost like Dark Brown Sugar, or Molasses.

5, The surface felt oily to the touch,

1. In all a nice wood to turn, all I need now is for better planning before I use the second bowl. Maybe this time I will halve it and make two shallow dishes from it, who knows

In message , Charlie writes

Hi Charlie

I spoke with them last week, and they actually had 2 pieces in stock. One was 9 inches long by 7 inches diameter, with pith the other slightly larger. The pricing was about twice that I would pay for 2 used bowling balls, but then again its slightly bigger as a single piece

if you wanted for more shipping and more to be collect check me through celestial snipped-for-privacy@mydestiny.net I can help you to have such unlimited size of any kind of bowls.