I've started my largest piece to date.

[Bill Wyko]

The segmented vessel I've started is going to be 12-1/2 inches in diameter and approximatly 21 inches tall. I've ordered the clark steady to keep control of it when it grows to size. I've got 8 of the rings made so far. There's going to be in excess of 30 rings in total. I did come up with a new way to keep my rings true round. I found that making 1/2 rings and sanding them parallel can still produce an egg shape so I built a jig to sand 1/4 rings which has produced very true rings. I'll post pictures tomorrow with my progress. i should be able to do the outside w/o any trouble but the inside I'm going to hold off on until my hollowing rig is in. The steady is about 2 weeks out and the hollowing rig about 3 to 4 weeks. Just more time for creativity.

[Bob Opsitos]

True, half rings can end up egg shaped, but you turn them back to round anyway. Of course I'm rather cautious with the ring thickness, and leave'em thick. If your gluing them up thin, I can see where it's worth the effort.

I like to at least knocking the corners off the inside of the rings, rather than waiting until the peice is assembled and hollowed. Makes the hollowing go a little better especially when you got all that length hanging off by a tenon. When I did a long segmented peice I was paranoid about abusing the peice turning it back round with just the hollowing rig. That said, my peice was much smaller in diameter, and thus fewer peices, and therefore chunkier shaped on the inside.

Bob

[Robert McGowen]

I think I am learning as I go...............

Pens in minutes......

Bowls in hours......

Hollow forms in days......

Segmented forms in weeks......

Wild Bill Wyko segmented forms in months......

hmmmm....... :rolleyes:

And I used to see bowls inside of trees, now I see segments in the little scraps on the floor....... this is a sickness....... :)

[Bill Wyko]

Look at it this way. You get to get rid of all those cutoffs that have been laying around for so long. The problem with eggs is when you get to 12 inches in diameter or so they can be off by 3/8s of an inch or so. What that leads to is a transparency in your piece. Or better known as a big hole in the side.:cool: Then you have to cut those rings out and start over again. That is one nice thing about segmenting though. With the size of this one I want to be as accurate as possible. It's a bigun':D Gotta break in the new mayo properly.

[Bill Wyko]

Here's a couple of pics of the rings that are the main color. I'm using 24 segments per ring. It makes it easy to turn because it makes for very little flat surfaces. I also thought I'd post a pic of my mug so you know who your talking to.:eek:

[Neal Addy]

Bill, I think the rim is too wide and the finish is awful. But don't give up... it could still be saveable.

I'm talking about the last pic, of course. The bowl is coming along fine! :D

[Bill Wyko]

A little trick I use to align my rings is to use this piece of mdf with the shaded rings to help in the positioning upon glue up. I use the cross hairs to do the initial alignment of the base