Here's a tip I came up with.

[Mark Burge]

The more experienced turners probably do this all the time, but it just came to me. I had a bowl blank between centers to turn a tenon and I then I took it off to affix the chuck. I had a little bit of wood in the center where the spur drive was to take off with a chisel. I was taking it over to my bench, when I thought, why don't I just do it here on the lathe ways? Well, then it hit me to pull the tailstock up and wedge the blank against the tool rest banjo. Here are some pics with and without the blank so you can see how I set it up. I've also thrown in a picture of a mallet that I did a while back. I was using it to knock the chisel. Comments welcome.

BTW, I can never get the pictures to come up in the order I want them to. The last will be first in this post as well as in heaven.

[Donny Lawson]

Nice tip, thanks for sharing.
Donny

[John Keeton]

Mark, you can manage your pics and place them in your text where you want. Put the cursor where you want a particular pic, then click the drop down where the "Manage Attachments" paperclip is, and click the pic you want in that location.

Hope that made sense!!

Nice tipe, BTW!

[Mark Burge]

Well, I'll be. Thanks for your tip John. Guess you're earning your moderator stripes:)

[Brendan Stemp]

Great idea Mark. Nope, never seen that done before. I think you can claim it as your own.

[Steve Schlumpf]

Mark - great idea! Glad you figured out a way to make things a little easier! Thanks for sharing!

[Harvey Ghesser]

I'll have to try that! Thanks, Mark!

[steven carter]

Mark,

Good idea. I use the dimple left by the tailstock to align the bowl when I remount the bowl after drying. If I have a nub I want to remove, I get a finishing nail and tap it into the dimple, through the nub so when the nub is removed, I still have the center marked.

Steve

[Cyril Griesbach]

Mark, Steve makes an excellent point here. Retaining that center point is important for aligning the bowl to re-turn after drying. I do not take it off but I make sure it is small enough to not interfere with the chuck jaws.

I do, however, like Steve's tip regarding locating the center point with a nail if one does choose to remove this nub.

[Mark Burge]

Cyril and Steve, you guys are right. This does obliterate the center mark if you are not careful. The nail is a good idea. I still have a little bit of the center hole left on this particular blank, but I've been without it before.

When I do that, I use a centering square to approximate the center on the oval tenon. You can get a pretty good approximation if you use enough lines.

Also, with a little padding, you could use this same technique after finish turning to remove the center nub, if you finish between centers. I keep some packing material around the shop for just such an occasion.

[Matt Hutchinson]

That's a good one! I do a similar thing also. I rough out my bowls/tenons using screw chucks or faceplates, so I don't use the tailstock usually. But in order to make sure there is a good bearing surface I actually hand plane the blank flat in the center, and I use the lathe as my planing bench.

Thanks Mark!!

Hutch

[Roland Martin]

More handy stuff to cram in my little brain:eek:. Thanks for sharing!