I broke my blank

[Sean Hughto]

Apologies. I have a juvenile sense of humor, sometimes. In the spirit of sharing failures as well as successes:

I turned an ash rough out only to have it check up when drying. I decided to practice truing it anyway and leraned a lesson about turning oval shaped hard woods: It's easy to push the air and have a strong catch when the oval comes round. Result: a big crack in the ash. Ba dump bump.

I'll be more patient next time - and I'm glad it was a ruined blank anyway. Bonus was aI got to check my thickness cross section. ;)

Picture below.

[Scott Lux]

Thickness looks very even, congrats. On the other hand, too bad you could find out.

[Richard Madison]

If it were my ash that was broken, I would sand the edges flat and glue it back together. Finish sand (or at least sand the glue joint) off lathe, and make up a good story to go with it. Hate to see a good piece of ash wasted. Could also glue in a contrasting insert, carefully shaped to minimize the subsequent sanding to level the surfaces. Just some holiday thoughts while waiting for glue to dry.

[Keith Christopher]

Been there done that. Isn't is quite the shock how it seems to 'explode' on you ? First thing I do is make sure I don't have any timber protruding from my body.

[David E Keller]

That's too bad... looks like a nice piece of ash. Wall thickness looks great as well. I wouldn't waste much time with it... There's plenty of ash out there.

[John Keeton]

There's plenty of ash out there.And, there will be much more - at least in the short run - with the Emerald Ash Borer hard at work!!:eek:

Sean, that was a clean break - I like the idea of some sort of glue up. Could you get the two pieces equal as to proportion - then take a piece of walnut (or two?) and bandsaw them to a traced line of the bowl shape? Then, glue it up and try again to true the bowl. I know it sounds like a lot of work, but it would be interesting to try to save it, and the result would have a neat story with it!!:D

If not, you have some of the coolest looking firewood in town!;)

[Sean Hughto]

Thanks for all the condolences and thoghts for a fix, fellas. A fix for the break still wouldn't solve the checking issues. Those too could I suppose be filled with epoxy and such, but I have enough blanks and too little shop time to mess about with it I think.

I notice the powers that be changed "ash" to "blank" in my header. I'm sort of surprised that such a mild non-profane/wood accurate giggle was deemed offensive. Apologies. My sense of "rated G" must be out of whack.