Oops !

[Hal Taft]

Well, I had a technical failure, just not the one I was worried about. When I started cutting inside, my chisel hit a void and dug in, and blew the burl off the base mount. It went flying through the air and hit the floor with a noise that sounded like a bowling ball hitting the lane. Much to my surprise, the burl was as tough as a bowling ball and was entirely unscathed, but for a small scuff where it hit the floor ! So I remounted it, re-trued it, and went back at it. I was still worried about what would happen when I got the walls thinned down, and I had an idea. I took some heavy duty stretch wrap that my company uses to bundle lumber, and tightly wrapped the burl, applying powerful sqeezing force to help offset the outward force of the chisel. I have no idea if it helped, but it didn't hurt, and I've got 2/3 of the insides removed. I've buttered the inside with West Epoxy to stabilize all the loose junk inside, and will finish turning out the rest in the next day or two.

[Bernie Weishapl]

Looks like a good save to me Hal. I have used shrink wrap my wife uses in the kitchen. It works well on pieces like yours and ones the get kind of creaky when turning.

[Steve Schlumpf]

Nice save Hal! Looking forward to seeing the finished piece!

[ROY DICK]

Don't give up. Keep at it.:D

[Hal Taft]

I was only brave enough to turn the walls of my HF/bowl/vase to about 3/8 of an inch, and the bottom was a little shallower than I would have chosen when I reached the total length of my toolrest plus some hairy scraper cantelevering. Other than that, it's all good. The wipe-on varnish is drying on the lathe, and tomorrow I'll pop it off and cove the foot. More pictures to come, artfully lit , with infinite white backdrop. I've learned that if I'm going to keep this up, I'm going to have to improve my tooling; longer scrapers and more versatile tool rests

[Dennis Ford]

It looks really good! The burl should be fairly stable (should not crack) and with the thick bottom, you won't have to worry about going through when you reverse it to finish the bottom.

[John Nowack]

would like t see the finished product