apple, experiment. crituque please

[curtis rosche]

heres a bowl i finished today, its from apple it was supposed to be dry but wasnt, it cracked a little, it was a challenge because no matter how sharp the scraper or how much it wouldnt stop tearing out. the weird thing was it wasnt on the end grain. i torched the knots, there is a little bit of tear out left, it just wouldnt come out. what do you think?

[curtis rosche]

a couple more pictures

[Bruce Pennell]

To bad it cracked so badly,great looking apple wood. Had a pepper tree do the same thing the other day. Made two bowls out of the same log, both had knots, one went oval and cracked a little, the other hasn't moved? Just wood I guess! Loved your osage bowl Curtis you are really improving.:D Curtis at a meeting of our turning club we had a demo on burning technique and dying with bleach. The demo was interesting, she also used a lot of router and dremel tooling in her art. She really charred the wood, loved the texture. I personally didn't like that charred look, to each his own....thats why its called art.

[curtis rosche]

there wasnt much of a crack before i charred it, just the end grain(that was the center of the log) and some tearout that wouldnt sand out that i was covering up. dumb me i burnt my hand 3 times charring this, i lost track of the blue flame i guess and started on my finger. doh! i think if i char again i will do the whole thing so it looks like the grain is highligted

[Mitchell Cholewinski]

Curtis
I think you did real well on this Curtis on the things you can control. The cracking on apple is very hard to control, I don't care who you are or what you do. Torching the wet wood didn't help it much either. Premature drying in certain spots, not so good an idea. Yes I think you did a nice job and you learned something on this turning , right? Keep them coming Curtis. Mitch

[Bernie Weishapl]

Curtis another good looking bowl. I don't like the charred look either and that is what caused it to crack even more. Hot heat on wet wood don't work as it dries it out to fast. On your tear out try a shear scrape with a bowl gouge instead of a scraper. I haven't made a scraper work on tear out yet. Get Bill Grumbines DVD on Turned Bowls Made Easy. He shows you 3 or 4 shear scraping methods. Yes they do work.

[Bruce Pennell]

Curtis I have to agree with Bernie, Bill does have two video's out now both are great. I would start with his first one Bernie mentioned, after you might like his second video Beyond the Basic Bowl. Bill is funny, easy to watch, and most of all a great teacher. Sell a bowl and buy a video.