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For me, the most effective way of reducing tearout of this type is by shear scraping with a bowl gouge. I find it avoids tearout better than any bevel supported cut I'm able to produce no matter how...

Nice work with a very appealing piece of wood. Not much evidence of the checking that so often occurs with Mallee burl.

Thanks for sharing.

Best,

Dave

I was given a section of a large Russian olive when visiting a friend in Laramie, WY. I made a cross grain box for him, shown below, about 7" in diameter and 5" or so high. Brian is right that the...

Very striking. Thanks for posting.

This horse is well past dead but. . .

It is possible to turn things from roundwood if you do something to allow the piece to shrink with less stress. One way to do that (which doesn't work for...

Here's another example of the tangential v radial issue. This is a cookie of oak that was cut green and a single bandsaw cut was made from bark to pith. This allows the piece to dry without the...

If we assume for the moment that the 17-19% is close to where the piece started, then there is considerable shrinkage yet to happen, and if it was made from a branch in the round, pretty likely to...

Hey Tim -- nice work. Getting firewood cut up has become a much longer chore when you count all the time spent evaluating each log's turning potential. I burn mostly maple and there's a fair...

I doubt a v-channel is needed if you're not epoxying it in. The epoxy is what creates the air seal. Dave

Thanks all for the overly generous words.

Alan, thanks for posting your work, love them all. The shapes are not something I've ever done but I find them very attractive, curves are beautifully...

Haven't been following this board closely in recent months but enjoyed catching up the last couple days. My perennial lament is that there's not as much posting of people's turnings here as there...

Beautiful handles. I think we are kindred spirits -- I use a different wood for each handle, which is fun, attractive, and lets me know what tool I'm grabbing without having to look at the business...

Don't believe any of the prior guesses are correct. A defining feature of that blank is the extremely large and irregular rays, which none of the suggested woods have. My guess would be sheoak, or...

Scott, hard to tell from your question if you have any experience with traditional turning tools. Apologies if anything below is mansplaining.

Especially when learning to use gouges for spindle...

You can use almost anything for the initial jam chuck (step #4 in Prashun's post). Just your scroll chuck with the jaws open wide works pretty well as the corners of the jaws can bite in a little.
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Spalted wood is often punky and tearout prone. David is right about potential issues for differential finishing consequences if you stabilize with CA glue or other treatments. I handle this by...

Some woods can exhibit extremes of behavior green v dry. My experience with butternut is that it is just wretched to turn green (fuzz, tearout) yet turns very nicely dry. Bradford pear is one of the...

Doesn't answer your question about tape, but I usually approach the situation by attaching a square of wood with CA glue and accelerator, and then hold the square waste block in a four jaw chuck. ...

If this is a flat top scraper, you might try cutting a little above centerline *when hollowing*. If you're right at centerline and the cutter drops at all, it can self feed and catch. Cutting above...

I would guess it's hackberry. Hackberry is really prone to dark staining, and the grain has the "W" pattern characteristic of hackberry (also elm).

https://www.wood-database.com/hackberry/
...

Very nice. Was that demo recorded and if so is it available somewhere?

Best,

Dave

Lawrence, the combination of skill, creativity, and irreverence in your work puts a lift in my day whenever I see it. Thanks for posting.

Dave

I'd assert that the differences in experience with cherry has much more to do with difference in ambient conditions (temp, relative humidity, and air circulation) than differences in the wood itself....

You probably knew what he meant, but Reed's suggestion of using a wrench for sizing is a good one, though you want an open end wrench, not a box wrench (box wrench is the closed loop kind). You can...

Having seen the close-up of the close-up of the cross-cut in the later pictures I withdraw my cherry opinion. John's got good stuff on why and how to proceed.