I recently came across some really large pieces of free cottonwood and I was able to get 4 chunks that I made 8 bowl blanks out of, 20-24” in diameter, plus 8 quarter sawn blanks for spindles/small facework. This is the largest I’ve ever worked with and am curious how others handle large blanks as some of the things I’ve done could probably be done better.
I started by cutting out the pith sections and then making octagonal shapes from the outer pieces. Every time I’ve tried to cut rounds on my bandsaw it messes up my blade (3/8” 3tpi highland Woodturners blades) so I’ve stopped doing that but then it makes mounting the large irregular pieces difficult and then the first 30 minutes of turning pretty slow going.
I was able to get about 19” rough bowls from the first couple pieces but am wondering if there is a faster/simpler way to do this. It is a lot of fun turning something this large but takes more time up front than I’m used to. Any recommendations from more experienced turners would be appreciated.
Here’s a few pics of the initial cut logs after hauling home and filling my tiny shop (4 of the bowl blanks are kind of blocked by my bandsaw in the picture):
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Here is an unturned mounted piece nearly maxing out my Laguna 2436 - I used an air hammer with my compressor to remove most of the bark and then once mounted I had to use an electric hand planer to trim a couple corners because it was >24” and was hitting my ways (first time I’ve tried this and it worked great and was really quick and easy to do):
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Here are the first sets of rough bowls:
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Any comments or suggestions are welcome (sorry about the sideways pics…..not sure why it did that). Thanks,
Tom