Blowout

[Jim Outman]

Got home from work, ate something and headed for the shop to see if I could turn something out. A bowl blank has had my eye for a while, good change of pace from little trees and snowmen. All going well as this oak is tough stuff that likes to catch. Bowl is turning out well but it has some tearout. So I sand it and buff it getting it looking pretty good, but I notice it had some cracks it in. Adding character, cool! Had a good shine going on but a few spots still showing some tearout.

Should have left it as is. Sharpened the snot out of my negative rake scraper and tried just touching it to take off any tearout and Boom! there it goes. I guess I need to learn to let it be when it looks good.

[Richard Coers]

Wood is never the reason of catches. Catches are always operator error!

[Paul F Franklin]

What a shame. Would have been a nice looking bowl.

[John Keeton]

In my opinion a bowl should not have been attempted with that piece of wood. Way too many cracks running all the way to the edge of the rim. And, your Harbor Freight lathe probably will not turn at slow speeds.

[Timothy Thorpe Allen]

Was this a green/wet blank? I've had a turned-green bowl crack something like that. I think the rim can dry out before and faster than the bottom of the bowl, and thus develop cracks like that from the rim down (and they might not show up while you are turning, but in the drying afterwards...)

[Jim Outman]

It was dry oak. I picked up a bunch of scrap chunks from a local sawmill so if one fails it's not a great loss. Had the speed about mid range. In hindsight I should have stopped and applied CA glue to the cracks. Thanks it would have been a keeper if it survived. I've wondered about getting a speed control for my harbor freight lathe.

Yes, as a former boss would always say when there was a disaster at the water plant, Operator Error! Not anything the boss did, LOL! Yep I touched it with the wrong tool at the wrong time.

[Prashun Patel]

It’s not always a catch. I rarely get catches when I am vigilant nowadays. But if the wood has underlying cracks, then as it thins when you turn, there is less and less wood to hold it together.

Oak is notorious to me for developing fatal cracks. I don’t do cracked oak any more. I have had 4 bowls blow up on me. all were oak.

[Brice Rogers]

It was dry oak. I picked up a bunch of scrap chunks from a local sawmill so if one fails it's not a great loss. Had the speed about mid range. In hindsight I should have stopped and applied CA glue to the cracks. Thanks it would have been a keeper if it survived. I've wondered about getting a speed control for my harbor freight lathe.

Yes, as a former boss would always say when there was a disaster at the water plant, Operator Error! Not anything the boss did, LOL! Yep I touched it with the wrong tool at the wrong time.

Mid-range on a HF reeves drive lathe is probably around 1500 RPM? If you had cracks in it, perhaps that high speed on a decent-sized bowl was just too much. I turn medium-sized pieces and I have never used my high range. So everything is turned below about 1200 RPM. 800 or 900 RPM is the max (for me) for about 90% of my turnings. Maybe I'm turning too slow. Or maybe you're turning too fast ?

[John K Jordan]

... I don’t do cracked oak any more.

I don't turn cracked anything any more. I don't want the risk, I don't want to do the repair, and I don't like the look of cracks, filled or not. To paraphrase a quote often attributed to the other John Jordan, life is too short to waste on junk wood.

I make exception for minor cracks on one end of spindle blanks when that end is held firmly in a chuck.

JKJ