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Long post about thin walls.

If you learn from your mistakes, I must be the smartest turner on rcw. My excursion into ultra thin this morning was so bad it was comical instead of sad.

Mounted a piece of NIP about 5"w X 10"h on a faceplate. Roughing to round went ok. Decided to turn an ultra thin walled hollow form with 1" entry. Made my way down to 1/4" with fairly consistent walls. Done this before, so no need to measure yet. Curve at bottom a little thick. Plenty of wall so still no need to measure. I'll take it out with my aggressive 3/16" inserted bit. The way a knot took off was quite aggressive in itself. Ok, the hole just adds to my reputation as an artist. Good turners stay the course, so I'll keep on hollowing now and measure later. No need to percuss the walls, I gave up thumping walls when I retired. Maybe real turners don't use lasers, but real funnel makers probably ought to. One last cut and I'll be dealing with mm.s and not too many of them. The wood's voice croaked, Viola! Two ragged edge funnels. Not much chance to claim abstract art now, but ain't my funnels got thin walls?

Waste not, want not so I squared off the fractured edges and superglued the two funnels back together. When I got the damn things running true again (well, the shadow was sorta small) one side was ultra thin, but the opposite side was micro and the glue line was no intimation of immortality. I finally skewed down to a decent glue line and added a supporting cast of grooves on each side.

Sanding my abortion was as joyful as riding on a rut road after ice-out and just as smooth. Being a purist, I went thru the grits from 80 al the way to 600 with two stops along the way, one at a wornout 120, the other at a brown paper bag. Excessive, but you all know I am a perfectionist.

Anyway a pretty good salvage so I'll cut it off the face plate and finish the bottom. I read rcw so I know to make it concave so it won't rock. Don't remember being advised to include the screws, but I did while the wood sang "clickety clack". A little more concave and I'll miss them and I made sure. The bottom can't rock now because it's no longer there.

All in all, a happy morning. Sun's shining brightly, wood's singing "whoda thought it" and my hide's intact. Another unfinished pencil box with my signature proudly taped over the hole in its bottom for Lori's extensive collection. Bless her. She will say she likes it so much that she will put it away with all the others for safe keeping. :)

Turn to Safety, Arch Fortiter

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Reply to
Arch
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Well, Arch - there is a first time for everything. I haven't had mine yet. :-)

Reply to
Joe Fleming

I know you do thin walls already, but some of us are on the other side of the learning curve, so here's some tidbits.

Last saturday we had a trio of presenters at our local turner's meeting. One of them was a student at the local HS who, as a student, had to make his own turning tools (not frugal, just broke), mostly out of small allen wrenches and drill bits.

Anyway, he talked of one day when he decided to make his own foray into thin walled hollow vessels. I'm talking 1-2" diameter, 1/8-1/4" hole. He said he did about 50 of them that day, cutting them all in half to see how he did. He had some samples. They were on the order of 1/32 or thinner - with consistent thickness! He had a whole bag of half-turnings.

One of the other presenters had an interesting tip to learn to go thin. After you turn the outside shape, use a spade or forstner bit to drill a bunch of holes about 1/4" deep all over the outside. Now, you can see what you're doing inside the form ;-)

Reply to
DJ Delorie

Sad thing is, aside from running a finger down the entry, who would have known how thin the rest was? Not as if they have a SG table for NIP handy, after all.

Were you doing it for other turners, or a test of yourself? If the latter, no penance required, go forth and thin no more....

Turned a sine curve on the edge of an oak plate yesterday because I was cleaning off junk on the top of the bench and wanted to see if I could. Crumbly and all, it works.

Reply to
George

Hah, it's happened to me at least once from not measuring. It happened again recently because I didn't bag a wet piece of wood when I didn't have time to finish it. A couple weeks later, I go to finish hollowing, and I find it's getting thin on one side and not the other. Argh! I tried to just smooth out the thin side and figured I'd deal with the other with my dremel later, but to no use...it was end grain, too much mass, too many cracks, and it exploded. Too bad, as it was a monster oak log with a giant overgrown knot hole on one side I had made into an oval natural edged opening. Was about 16" high and 14" wide and large hollow thing. I usually glue them back together when things break off at the end, but I can't even find all the pieces in the sawdust. Looked for hours. Now it's firewood.

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Reply to
Mark Fitzsimmons

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