Steve Promo sent the following:
Several years back, on a warm summer Saturday morning, the HWC members met for their regular meeting at the Moran maintenance building. We were asked to bring chunks of wood with us and try to collectively brainstorm for options on what turning(s) it could yield.
Gary Weiermiller did some EXCELLENT drawings suggesting shapes and grain orientation that many of us had not considered. Several of us gathered opinions, weighed the merits of each, and roughed out the blanks with a chainsaw in the parking lot, taking them home to turn. As I write this I am wondering if any of you has a photo of a piece you have turned following that meeting. My piece is just about done, nearly five years later!!! Thought I might share it with you…..
The grayed out standing dead walnut crotch I had with me that day came from Ohio. It had been stashed under my workbench for at least 10 years. It was about the diameter of a basketball, the three branched crotch swelling to the 2 ft in diameter at the top of the three equally spaced cut off branches. The branches were about 6 to 8” in diameter. I thought about turning a deep bowl with three natural rim peaks. (Big three sided funnel). Gary suggested turning it upside down and making a large teardrop. Sounded great to me as the tree limbs were splintered and very uneven in height. I chainsawed it out and took it home.
The exterior took about an hour to turn and sand. That same day. I also drilled out the middle about 10” deep with a 1.25” Forster bit and bagged it overnight. The next morning, I started boring it out with a 3/4” trapped boring bar. It took most of the day, first hogging out then blending scraping that section before moving deeper. I settled on a wall thickness of 3/16”. There was no room for chips to escape around the 3/4” bar inside a 1.25” entry hole. Lots of starts, turn until the chips accumulated enough to make the bar rattle. Then withdraw the bar, blow out the cravings, re-sharpen as needed, reset the laser dot, and repeat. The wood was VERY dry, gnarly, hard and dusty. I was hollowing into end grain which demands non-aggressive tooling and as I went deeper and deeper I was hanging the boring bar further and further off the toolset. I was tired but I wanted to finish the hollowing as it might warp overnight so I kept on going, past being tired. On the final scraping cut across the very bottom I went past the middle nubbin, hit the wood coming uphill, the bar came off the toolrest in a millisecond and the piece exploded all over the shop.
Disgusted, I shut off the lights and went in the house. Next morning I removed the bottom from the chuck, threw it into a box and tossed in every piece I could find. I found pieces 20 feet from the lathe. I shoved the box under the workbench instead of tossing it into the wood stove. Don’t know why?
Cleaning out the shop a year or so later I opened the box and wondered how much of it was “missing.” Was cold and rainy so I decided not to go fishing. Got out my hot melt glue gun and tacked it back together with dots of glue.
Most of it was there! Ran short of time for the next two years. It waited on the shelf as a lesson “Haste makes waste" until last fall. I was going south and would have time on my hands to mess with it. (See First Photo)
20 hours with the Dremel (enlarging cracks), placing turquoise chips with magnifying visor and tweezers, lots of CA and accelerator spray and the piece was ready to sand. Sanding opened up tiny holes in the infill so I re-filled them then resanded with 80-120-220 and refined the opening. (Second photo infill on bottom)
Next I applied three coats of friction polish by hand with paper towel. I rubbed in circles with light pressure against the piece, fast enough to warm it some as the alcohol flashed off and the shellac cured. At present the piece has its first coat of wipe on poly (minwax—satin). I expect to apply coats until all the open pores are filled up, then apply a few more coats, let it harden for several days, then buff the piece with steel wool then flannel wheels and wax. (See third photo—current appearance)
I am not sure why I chose to save this piece, reconstruct it, and highlight the lines along which it blew itself into bits with the centrifugal force of the lathe. Maybe it was to save a piece of wood that I had great hopes for? Maybe it was to help pass the days here until I return to my shop? Maybe it is an unspoken homage to James Johnson, my woodturning mentor, who often will spend hundreds of hours carving, sanding, dyeing, double dyeing, lacquering, and embellishing his pieces after turning them to extraordinary uniform wall thicknesses well under 3/16”. Many times his pieces defy your senses. How can such a piece weight so little and be so large.? Whatever the reasons, I am glad I invested the time and materials to save the piece from the wood stove. It also caused me to do a careful analysis of what went wrong so the same thing does not happen again. James Johnson and the late Frank Sudol both saved their broken pieces. James explained what caused each one I asked him about. Frank called his “future design opportunities.”
In closing, I urge all of you to not fear blowing a piece up once in a while. Maybe getting outside your comfort zone and trying to achieve a wall thickness much less than you are accustomed to will make you a better turner. There is a certain reward that comes from taking risks. More risk might just mean more value, or at least a great story in the end.
I am considering "Humpty Dumpty”, “Persistence", and "More than its cracked up to be” as a name for the piece.
Will bring it to the show and tell table for the Sept 2021 meeting.
Click on gallery (I own piece #20….1/8” thick….half that thick under cacti panels. Weighs VERY little.
Click on large vase
Image 1 - Hot glued back together
Image 2 Hot glued back together
Image 3 - Finshed product
Image 3 - Fnished product
