Thread: Norfolk Island Pine WIP

Day 1

The piece of timber - what have we got ourselves in for!!.

Started by planing off a fairly smooth face and screwing on the largest face plate. At this time there were two of us and we scratched our heads for a while before struggling and lifting it on the lathe.

Would be interesting to see how this pans out.

Day 1

Now sitting on the lathe we decided that we should probably remove the bark. Later we decided that this step probably should have been done prior to lifting it onto the lathe - would had made it easier to lift and saved about 5kg.

Day 1 (Cont'd)

Finally on the lathe - woohoo

You can see in these photos the voids that sucked up all of my superglue

Now the fun begins!!

I note you got the little lathe out to try this NIP WIP on

I see safety glasses are a must - especially worn on the forehead

are you going to lop the branches off with a little husky (or some other brand of chainsaw)

PS
just saw the mounted version - reminded me of a Sarich engine
and 3 bottles of superglue - that's probably our weekly grocery bill!

Day 1 (Cont'd)

Roughing gouge #1

Now resembling some close to roundish!!

Any particular reason why you didn't take the branches off before mounting on the lathe?

Day 1 (Cont'd)

Roughing Gouge # 2

and still the lathe hasn't been turned on.

Ah Ha
put on lathe then use Husky (or McCulloch)

Day 1 (Cont'd)

Reinforcements arrive just in time to jump on the lathe. So we get started roughing in earnest and work out very quickly that it was not as soft as it was a few months ago. Particularly the area where the branches are the going is quite tough. We ended up one person sharpening, one person turning and one person 'directing/resting'.

- Luckily I buy my superglue in bulk - I normally use a lot filling voids on burls I turn.
- We did think about taking the branches off prior to mounting on the lathe but felt that it would be easier to manoeuvre with the branches on initially.

- The idea of this project was to do something that was out of our normal comfort zone and bring some members of our club together for an enjoyable weekend - we too our time and enjoyed debating the rights and wrongs of various techniques.

Day 1 (Cont'd)

Who said two people can't work at the same time

The day was coming to the end and we were getting pretty thirsty. By end of day one the outside was pretty much finished and ready for remounting in the morning!!

By this time we were starting to get pretty excited bout the colours that were becoming evident on the outside of the bowl!!

Day 2

Wake up to give the outside a final sand and tidy up the foot then its time to remount.

Day 2 (Cont'd)

The only thing better than one NIP is 3 so out comes the bowl corer and into it with earnest. The coring was pretty slow going with regular stops to clear the shavings.

Day 2 (Cont'd)

First bowl out and into the second.

By this time it was about 1:30 in the afternoon and the project that I initially thought could be completed in one day, then two days, was looking more like a three day affair.

We hit a roadblock when I run out of coring blade with about 20mm to go. The NIP was still too wet for it to snap out. Someone came up with the idea of using an old bandsaw blade to finish the cut - it worked like a dream