I am really proud of this one! I bought a cherry burl round about two years ago. About a year ago, I was rummaging through my stash of rounds and found that it had warped and cupped really badly. It was about 1 1/2 inches thick when I got it. I decided to try to salvage it. I attached two parallel pine boards on the outside edge so I could run it through the planer. Once I got it flat, I was down to 1 1/8" thick. I attached a piece of wood to the end of my chuck, making sure that it was perfectly flat to the lathe, then used the "glue+brown paper bag" method to attach it to the wood on the chuck. I had already found center on the newly planed cherry burl round and used the lathe as a giant clamp to press it against the chuck/glued paper (adding a layer of glue to the paper where the cherry attached to the chuck). I did this 45 years ago in high school shop, and hoped that it would hold. It did!
I was able to turn it THIN! The end result has a top rim diameter of 7.5", bottom rim diameter of 5.5", and 1" in height. The rim wall and the bottom is 1/10th of an inch thick. At the bottom rim edge, the max is less than 1/3" thick. I used a wood butt chisel, placed flat at the seam between the brown paper and the cherry bowl (flat side toward cherry) and made sure the bowl had the grain oriented up and down (chisel at top). I bumped the chisel a couple of times and it came off. I just had to sand off the glue with a rotary sander. No chuck marks on the bottom and it sits perfectly flat. It was sanded to 2000 grit, and the photo shows 2 coats of Minwax with Tung Oil. Another one or two coats are needed after it cures a few more days.
cherryburlbowl.jpg
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