Success! While definitely NOT the nicest looking bowl on this site, its my frst successful semi-round, kinda hollow bowl shaped thingie so I'm pumped!
Grabbed a chunk of firewood off the pile (lots of choices here - birch and spruce), hacked off a piece, bolted it to the faceplate and proceeded to vibrate it roundish. Unbolted and mounted to my new Grizzly chuck (You'll like it Stu!) and the fun began. Hit the "groove" with the spindle gouge and drilled to depth. Is that sweet or what? Almost went right thru the bottom as I was having so much fun. Swithced over to the skew and chips and curlies were a flying.
It's buried in a pile of shavings on the floor, going to stop and find some DNA tomorrow to give that a try. This stuff cracks like crazy but I'll see if I can save something out of it. About 6" wide and 5" tall.
I learned several things tonight:
1) Sharp is good,
2) dull is bad,
3) the grinder is your friend,
4 Sharp is fun,
5) dull is not so fun,
6) tighten your chuck really good,
7) my "cat like"reflexes are still there, and
8) I wanna do it again.
First rough bowl (600 x 450).jpg
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From the photo it's obvious that it's a chunk out of the side of a tree, so you must have had it mounted so the grain was at 90 deg to the lathe's turning axis. Therefore, AFAIK, you should have been using a bowl gouge to safely cut the cross grain (both inside and outside of the bowl). Maybe you changed the grind on your spindle gouge? If not, then I believe you should proceed with caution - I remember being told that using a spindle gouge on cross grain (faceplate turning) is very dangerous and a basic no-no. Was I told wrong? And, the only time I use a skew chisel on a bowl is (rarely) to take a very fine cleanup cut right before sanding....you say you had curlies flying off your skew....hmm?!
Originally Posted by Barry Stratton
