Incised platter in progress

[Dick Mahany]

Tried my hand at incising a platter. It was something new for me and fun. The platter is redwood 11.3" dia with a wall thickness of 1/8". It is very fragile at this point. I made this from a 5/4 board and didn't have much room to work with for the curvature. Do any of you have suggestions for a typical wall thickness when incising work like this as this seems too thin??

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[Jim Burr]

Oh boy Dick...you have your hands full! It's gonna be sweet when done!

[charlie knighton]

Michelle, what say you

[Michelle Rich]

hey charlie, what I say? I have some pieces at .363 inches thick, that are "incised" from both sides. And I bet I could go thinner if need be. But I have never felt the need to be thinner.
Dick: I think this is a great first try..harder to achieve than it looks, isn't it? Try starting at TDC or EXACTLY at the middle of your wood. If you do that you won't get the funny off kilter look to the piece. If your stand that the router sits on is angled in the slightest, you will get the look too. Keep at it..new worlds of turning joy await!

[Peter Blair]

NIce Dick. I think for a piece of that diameter 1/8" is about what I would do as well. I sometimes raise my router to produce the off centre cuts as you did with this piece.

[Dick Mahany]

Thanks all for the comments. I am still in awe after having seen many of Michelle's work posted on this forum. It is definitely harder than it looks and I'm not ready to do double sided work (yet) and her designs are soooo far more complicated than this simple attempt. I'd like to work with a thicker cross section, but don't currently have any small diameter bits that would handle the depth.

As far as the angled incisions, I purposely offset the router table ~1/2" below center to achieve the effect after I had seen one of Harvey Fein's pieces and wanted to experiment a bit. Not sure that I like the end result though and on-center might look better. My incising jig is tiltable and I could have achieved the affect that way also. Just so much to learn. Now if I can successfully remove the waste block without blowing it up, I'll be happy.

[Dave Fritz]

Do you get a lot of vibration as you reach the end of the platter?

Dave F.

[Dick Mahany]

Do you get a lot of vibration as you reach the end of the platter?

Dave F.

When I turned the platter, I worked from the outside - in, in sections, on the rear face. As I reached the final thickness, I would not go back out due to the thinness and excessive flexing. For routing, I started on the inside holes and routed right to left slowly and steadily. I never had any vibration during the routing but I could see the leaves flex if too much pressure was placed by the follower.