Madrone is a species of wood unique to the Pacific Northwest, and for those of us who have it readily available -- I certainy do -- it's wonderful to work with. It's dense, durable, and can have a wonderful red color. The burls, especially, are in demand, although the project here is a simple straight grain. But madrone does present some challenges. I thought I share today's adventure.
First of all, this wood almost always grows in a leaning orientation. That is, the trunk grows under compression, scrunching the growth rings together on one side, and when the wood cures it wants to spring back, warp, and crack. Not good.
One of the easiest and cheapest ways to deal with this tendency is to rough turn the bowl to a general shape, then boil and dry the blank, setting it in a cool place for a good period of time. The project you see here was from a tree felled about a year ago. I cut it round on my bandsaw, mounted it on the lathe, turned it to about an inch thick. then boiled it in water for several hours. I choose not to coat it with wax (I usually do) and simply set it aside in a corner of the shop to dry out.
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After 12 months, this is what it looked like. Yes, that's a moldy crust that has formed on many of the surfaces. I eliminated that by occasionally spraying the blank with household bleach.
This week I took the blank down and checked the moisture level: 12 percent, which is just about right. It was slightly oval, but no cracks. So the first task at hand was to clean up the tenon and area around the tenon so that I could re-chuck it and turn a finished bowl.
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(Sorry some of these photos are sideways. SMC turns them automatically sometimes and I haven't figured out how to keep that from happening.)
I mounted the rough bowl in my Cole jaws, engaged the tailstock, and trued up the tenon, also taking time to smooth up the bottom of the bowl near the tenon and create an eventual base ridge. With that done, I can mount the bowl onto a four-jaw chuck. I choose to do this before I remove it from the Cole jaws because it stays truer to the headstock.
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Note: This is a process I noted in my "Nifty Shop Tips" thread. I follow this almost every time I'm converting a bowl from one mount (eg, faceplate) to a final four-jaw chuck. With the blank firmly mounted, I can switch it around and begin to shape the bowl.
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A degree of problem solving was made at this point, and the basic design chosen. The first thing I needed to do was get the darn thing balanced because it had a slight vibration. I initially rough-turned the outside, then completed the inside shape with scrapers. Returning to the outside again, I added three beads at the top of the rim. There was a bit of minor tearout at the waist that, after trying various tooling methods, I finally sanded away.
After sanding everything to 220, I applied a coat of lacquer sanding sealer, which will serve as a basecoat for the eventual satin lacquer. Here's what it looks like now, still mounted in the chuck, ready for final sanding and multiple coats of clear lacquer.
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It measures a full 10 inches across and 8 inches tall, with a wall thickness of 3/8ths of an inch. I plan to color the beads with lacquer, too, probably a green or black. I still need to reverse mount it and turn off the tenon, so there's a bit more to go.