New Equipment Gloat

[Raymond Overman]

I made an order from Lee Valley early in the week after selling a few pieces last week. I ordered a Mcnaughton center saver and it came in the post today. I had also been looking at a reciprocating hand piece for my Foredom rotary tool and decided I'd go ahead and pick that up at Klingspor too. This evening I took my new toys out to the shop to have a go.

First the Mcnaughton setup, this thing is a trick on a stick. Even though I've never used one and had only seen Bill Grumbine use one once in person, I cored a piece of walnut that I had sitting around on the first go. It wasn't easy by any means and I'll have to do some practicing and fine tuning on the technique, but in no time I had a small bowl cored out of the center and a second bowl cored from the largest diameter bowl.

It isn't for the faint of heart though and I stayed out on the end of the tool well away from any pieces that had the potential to stray off the lathe. There's some definite finesse in using it and I almost made the bottom of the largest bowl too deep. I only had about a 1/2" of material left in the middle bottom and wanted to leave about 1". I'm sure I'll get the hang of it though.

Second the foredom reciprocating handpiece snapped on quickly to my rotary tool and the shallow spoon and v groove made quick work of some test texturing on a piece of scrap. I'll have to get back with more info on this one once I have a chance to use it on a project.

[Alex Elias]

Sounds like your hard work is paying of and now your are due for some fun and a new leraning curve with that tool. Congratulations and leep us post it with your work

[John Hart]

Cool! Great score...Trade turnings for tools. I'm still spending money.:o

One of these days I'll do one of those coring things...until then, I'll just keep making mountains of shavings.

Congratulations.:)

[Hilel Salomon]

I ordered a couple of the corers for sc and va. and finally got around to using one in VA. The instructions leave a lot to be desired, so I had to order the Mahoney dvd and look carefully at the pics in the Craft catalogue. I'm a pretty dreadful turner so all I did was core out smaller bowls out of a large cherry blank and a large maple one. It was a bit scary and the DVR XP had occasional stops, but it was fabulous. A lot less cleaning of chips and what- if I don't screw up- will be father/daughter and mother/son bowl sets. I may even screw up the courage to post pics.
Hope all of you have great Thanksgiving weekends.
Hilel.

[Raymond Overman]

Hilel,

I'll agree about the instructions. A picture or diagram is worth a thousand words when it comes to this thing. Luckily I had seen Bill Grumbine use one at the NC symposium and was able to take some notes from memory.

I've only used it once to core two blanks out of a piece of walnut but the problem I ran into is determining the right angle (or possibly the right boring bar) for a shallow cut. I used the tight radius boring bar for my first small cored bowl out of the center, then the middle radius boring bar for the second core.

The second core was a little deep in the largest bowl so I went ahead and cut down the walls to final thickness. I won't be surprised if I get an out of round bowl by Monday and probably cracks since I was turning somewhat green but with the major differences in wall thickness, I know it would have cracked if I had left it the way it was.

I'll need to practice some more for sure.

[Steve Schlumpf]

Congrats on the coring equipment! I've thought about it as I sure hate to waste all that wood! Will follow your learning curve and see how you like using the system you have. So far it sounds like it is a little scarey but works just fine!

[Hilel Salomon]

Raymond,

I'm not as brave as you. I just cored one bowl out of each blank so that I could use a faceplate on the smaller bowls and get them down to dna size. I did wonder how deep I was going and may splurge again and get a laser attachment which would let me know. First though, I'll try and use the different blades. I used the middle one on the Cherry blank and the steeper radius on the maple. I've seen your work and it's so much better than what I manage, so I'm looking forward to seeing it. As for warping, half of my bowls are warped and I've grown to (rationalizing of course) like the wavy pattern of the rims.
Luck, Hilel.