Ventilated Platter

[Kathy Marshall]

I turned this from a section of one of the bigger logs of the dunnobutIwantmoreofit wood from yesterday (which I think has been identified as willow acacia by another creeker). The log had a big knot hole in one side and the other side was indented, so I ended up cutting out a section from the middle, including the pith.
There was a lot of rot inside, chunks were falling out as I was turing it, but I carried on. Haven't given up on a piece yet and this was not going to be the 1st.

I started by roughing the bottom and trying to find as much solid wood as I could to make the tenon. Then the wood pretty much dictated the shape. I wanted to have as much solid wood in the rim as I could get and for the rest of the bottom, I turned as much as the rot away as I could and still have some kind of shape to it.

When the bottom was done, I mounted it in my chuck and used the tailstock for support since I knew there was some rot under the tenon and I didn't need any IFO's flying around the shop. I kept the tailstock up until I just had a nub just over 1/2" diameter left. The inside bottom of the bowl was literally falling apart.
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After I took this pic, I loosened the tailstock to see how solid the nub was and it fell out in my hand, the bottom of it was rotted through.
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To finish the inside bottom, I reduced the speed to about 600 rpms and took very, very light cuts and kept the edge razor sharp.

I then reversed it using my cole jaws and it probably took about 20 minutes worth of light, light cuts to turn away the tenon and finish the bottom.

I still need to sand it, which I'll do by hand. When I tried to sand the bottom on the lathe, it just wanted to catch in the voids and the punky wood was just to soft. All of the light streaks are punky, rotten wood and I'll clean up the worst of it (it will probably blow out with a blast of air from the compressor).
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Thanks for looking!
Comments and critiques are welcome.

[Donny Lawson]

Kathy, that might have been a good project to try some inlay casting on.

[Josh Bowman]

Kathy I like you work and like stuff with voids, but that one to my eye, especially the last picture doesn't do much for me. I agree with the Donny and maybe some epoxy casting.

[Paul Williams]

Once again success comes to those who are too stubborn to give up. I under stand the challenge, but with all of the wonderful wood that you have why?

[John Keeton]

Perseverance is an admirable quality, Kathy, but I think I would have passed on this one! Very nice work, but bark inclusions seem to have more character than does this situation. I bail out pretty quickly when the wood is rotten - just hard to make much of it.

Glad it stayed on the lathe for you, though.

[David E Keller]

I understand the need to finish something... Besides, it's a fun challenge to deal with the punky stuff sometimes. Now that you've got 'er finished, I'd skip the sanding and finishing, and I'd move on to another piece of something. I think life's long enough to turn crappy wood sometimes, but it's never long enough to sand and finish crappy wood!

[Baxter Smith]

Have to say I agree with David on this one. There is going to be a first someday. Might as well get it over with.:)

[Bernie Weishapl]

Kathy you have a lot more staying power and patience than I would have. Agree with David that there is to much good wood to turn bad wood.

[Russell Neyman]

...and what did you do to deal with the ongoing decay?

I like the work and understand that sometimes you just want to see things through. Besides, the best turnings are often the surprises. A neighbor has all of my "rejects" and loves the funkiness of them, even though I declined to sign them.

If you decide to fill the voids with brass filings and epoxy (or something else) please post an updated photo. Thanks for sharing.

[Jeff Fagen]

Oops! Now it's art.

[Ian Jeffcock]

Kathy, I like it. My vote is to finish it. It has character.

[Russell Neyman]

Nowadays I have "character"-- but I was cute once!

Not that your platter has character in that way; great job.

[Thomas Canfield]

Kathy,

They say "discretion is the better part of valor" and one should learn when and where to pick his/her fights. This one looks like it has all the markings of a major project that has a long learning curve. It is hard to leave one, but I am in the process of cleaning up my shop for a move, and there are several similar projects that will not be making the move. Good luck if you decide to finish it.

[Kathy Marshall]

Thanks for the comments guys!
Call me stubborn, but I just can't leave it alone. I'm working on an epoxy fill and if it works out, it will be a huge difference. If it doesn't work out, then I'll have learned something about large epoxy jobs. I'll post pics if it's successful.
I've turned 3 more bowls of various sizes from this wood (good solid pieces) and boy is the wood pretty! I'll post pics after the finish is done.

[Russell Neyman]

Kathy, don't let these guys beat you up too much. Stand your ground. After reading this post earlier today, i dug through my files and found shots of one of the bowls that brought me a great deal of satisfaction. It's called "Wormy" so you can see the direction I'm going to go with this. Here's the finished piece, which is in an art gallery right now:
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This is a classic example of working with a rotten, worm-eaten bowl blank and making it into something pretty nice. I bought it for almost nothing at my woodturning club's monthly auction. It was pretty obvious that the bugs had chewed on it pretty good, and it was really dirty, haven been stuck in someone's shed for many years. The first thing I did that night was put it in the freezer, leaving it there for a week to kill all the varmints. I cut it into a 14-inch blank, tossing the crusty edge pieces in the trash bin. When I finally began to turn it I really didn't expect much. I mean, it looked horrible. As things progressed, and I discovered some fairly nice rays within the grain, so I thought "Hey, this might be a nice bowl!" Then-- potential disaster. Have a look:

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A big chuck of woodworm nest came flying out, and it resulted in a huge hole clear through the almost-finished bowl. Game over.... but wait! Having been this far, I decided to try to do some repair. I mean (like you) what did I have to lose? I dug into the trash and found lots of pieces of the tree bark from the original blank cutting, broke them into roughly the shapes of the holes, and epoxied them in. It took several layers and some creative coloring (I mixed red, then black, then brown dies in with the epoxy) eventually building up a bark-like patch. I even placed a tree branch round endwise in the round part of the void so it looked very much like a knot. After everything cured, I re-chucked it, turned down the excess, then applied several coats of amber shellac, and you see the result. The green textured band helps to distract the eye from the patched area, but the truth is most people don't notice it's there. In fact, no one has noticed it.

The point is, what you have in this "rotted" platter might actually be some of your best work. Keep at it. Do a little patchwork and re-turning, then come back here and gloat.