Son in Law Wood

[George Tokarev]

The SiL brought three chunks off the small end of a fallen birch out at deer camp last fall. Log is 19" at the base, these a mere 12+. He asked me if I wanted him to bring in some more.

Avoided chasing snow snakes after lunch and ripped one chunk up the middle for turning. Think I ought to ask for more?

He's a metals guy, but I'm workin' on him.

[Tony De Masi]

absolutely !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Jerry Clark]

Good start George. BTW, what are "snow Snakes"--?? :rolleyes: I did see ice worms in Alaska-- :D

YES ask for more wood-- never have enough!:eek:

[Steve Schlumpf]

Beautiful wood George! Going to be some great looking bowls once you're finished! Love the spalted patterns!

[Rob Bourgeois]

Maybe I missed it but why do you leave the column in the center of the bowl. And not to start old arguments BUT do you think that when you tested the alcohol method perhaps your columns and somewhat thicker than normal sides caused you to have issues with it.


Nice wood BTW

[Paul Engle]

By all means, my customers love the spalted stuff , $$$:D

[George Tokarev]

Snow worms? Didn't have the snow we have here when I was in Anchorage or on the Aleutians, but I'm not sure if the difference is the depth of snow or the size of the dog.;) They seem to spawn every spring, about the time the roads become impassable.

The posts in the center of the bowls are from roughing with a pin chuck. Much safer on the operator, allows easy turning of a mortise hold to reverse and hollow, using the tailstock for support when hogging rapidly. Once they've dried, I bore the oval hole circular again and repeat the process. I leave them around an inch thick to allow for possible redesign, as I'm in not great hurry.

At one inch or so, depending on the wood, they'll reach EMC in six/eight weeks, depending on the relative humidity. Thinner would halve that, but wouldn't allow as much leeway for redesign. My favorite, cherry shows a fairly consistent 1/4" loss per foot of diameter when the curvature approximates that of the annual rings. Maple near 3/8, but the maples are shade tolerant and close-ringed compared to the open-grown cherry. Shrink is a tad less at 5/8 thick. Of course the orientation and interval of the rings is the determining factor there, not how rapidly they're dried. Wood loses moisture through the vessels at ten times or greater the rate of loss through the face or quarter grain, and a bowl shape as you see has no place farther than an inch and a half from air through the end grain.

To test the alcohol hypothesis I used a couple of 6" turnings, and to properly control the experiment, cubes and wafers of wood taken in succession from green pieces. Wanted to make the controls as similar as possible to the test pieces to determine if there really was a dependant variable. By weight and shape, none was discovered, and though the turnings were dried in paper, as indicated, the time to EMC was only a week more than unwrapped pieces. Only pieces to end check were some that were subjected to 45% RH immediately

I'm a big fan of spalting until things start to white out altogether, then they can be more of a PITA to turn and sand without dipping into the soft grain than they're worth. Now to see how much birch an F250 can haul! If the pieces are spalted to the same degree I'll give you a jingle, Steve, and pass some on.

[Christopher Zona]

The posts in the center of the bowls are from roughing with a pin chuck. Much safer on the operator, allows easy turning of a mortise hold to reverse and hollow, using the tailstock for support when hogging rapidly. Once they've dried, I bore the oval hole circular again and repeat the process. I leave them around an inch thick to allow for possible redesign, as I'm in not great hurry.
Sorry George, but my brain is still below the frost line here. We just had our first really warm day and things are still a bit frosty here.

Does the pin chuck go into the head or tail stock in your process? Or do you move it around?

I get it if you put a hole into the face, the pin in the head stock and rough the outside, but then what?

Do you use a tenon or recess at the foot of the bowl, flip it into a regular chuck and put the pin into the tailstock and use it as a live center?

[George Tokarev]

The pin chuck is on the headstock for outside shaping where it's both hold and drive. The 1" size of the hole used for mine allows the tapered nose on the live center in the tailstock to be used to help center and maintain pressure on the face of the jaws once the chuck is engaged as the hold and drive for removing the interior. Example in motion at http://s35.photobucket.com/albums/d160/GoodOnesGone/?action=view&current=Inside.flv where the piece has already been dried, rounded outside and sanded prior to reversing. It's going to take broadband to see it.

Love the device. It's a ~$70 option for holding roughs regardless of bark up or down which allows me to keep different jaws mounted on the scroll chucks, and since the oval hole on a dried blank guides the drill along the same path as the original bore, it makes for easy centering and minimum diameter loss. The method is also helps prevent dismounts, because it gives me a lot of resistance at right angles to the axis of rotation until the bowl is at its lightest and most balanced.

After I change the oil in the kid's car I'll try to get him do some videography of a bark up piece. Then it's back to rock-picking in the garden. They seem to reproduce each spring like the snow snakes.

My original pin chuck was a bi-directional type, one of the options on my original Masterchuck. The current, for my "new" lathe is unidirectional, and less prone to rolling over the pin with wet soft woods.

[TYLER WOOD]

Absolutely under no circumsatnces are you to have him get you more wood.

He is more than able to get me some though!:D

[George Tokarev]

He told me last night that the top was 19, he couldn't get his arms around the butt end of the log. We're going to need a bigger truck.

Chris, the kid was late, and I'd rather be out while the weather's sunny, so no video. Did a standard rough and this one, which is drying a bit to allow sanding, before lunch. I'll be mounting bottom out on the pin chuck again to sand underneath, then reverse to clean and sand the inside. Great being able to do all the reverses with confidence the piece will center!

When I was sawing the blank I set it near some regular yellow birch. This is usually referred to as "cherry birch" or "black birch," up here because of the bark form and wood color, though the taxonomists say it's just a sport of the regular yellow Betula alleghaniensis. I'll pop a couple pictures of the bark later.

[Christopher K. Hartley]

George, I'm with Tony!;) By the way did someone mention snow? SNOW, What's SNOW???:confused: He...he...he...from Houston.:D :D Even my neighbor thinks I'm nuts when I use my fifteen year old snow shovel on my wood chips.:)

[Christopher Zona]

George,

Thanks for the information. Your method does look like it helps create a lot of stability. I'm just trying to keep the piece in the new chuck that I got. I have to learn how to get the taper correct. Too much or too little and I make firewood.

[George Tokarev]

Depending on the chuck, you may be concentrating on the wrong aspect. My Nova jaws are stepped, with a tapered section followed by a straight. Don't use the straight if you're using the taper. Means cutting the mortise no deeper than the tapered section rather than going to the base of the jaws, or the tenon shorter to go only to the base of the interior dovetail on those jaws.

Seems counterintuitive, which is why some of us had to learn it the hard way, but what we're really doing is drawing the tenon or wedging into the mortise to gain a firm connection at right angles to rotation on the shoulder with a tenon or the bottom of the mortise. If the wood angle is steeper than the steel, it'll work. Given the elasticity of the wood, even a tad less will hold. Just don't crank down on the jaws and crush wood.

I'll pop a picture of the cherry from yesterday later, should emphasise what I'm saying in pictures.

See if this helps. The corrosion from the acid wood shows where the jaws contacted pretty well. You can reverse to a jam chuck and scrape it away or, as I often do, color the entire recess with permanent marker.

[Chip Sutherland]

I wasn't shown the technique of leaving the center post in a bowl. I thought I was just supposed to plow it out. But when doing a really big green bowl, I realized that I'd never get is mounted back correctly after it dried and warped. The center column is the solution. Plus I was thinking safety, too. I leave it until the last minute when finish turning. Then, I swap out my tail chuck for a cone shaped chuck. I turn the post down then I just keep inching it deeper into the bowl until I feel safe enough to finish turn the bowl bottom.

The cone tail chuck helps me realign the dry bowl, too, while I re-find the original sweet spot on my SuperNova. I use a tenon in my SuperNova (and Midi) chuck 80% of the time. I'm not a big fan of using the outside dovetail for compression. But I will use one when the need arises....but I've launched more pieces with this method than a tenon.