First Bowl in 5 years. Crappy piece of pine...

Evening Gents.

We moved to a new property 5 years ago so everything was packed away into containers etc pending construction of my new shed and renovations to the house, horse yards etc. Much to do, a business to run, bills to pay, wife to keep happy... not necessarily in that order... and the new shed kept getting pushed down the list. You know how it goes.

Anyway, I finally finished the external construction on the new shed (18m x 12m) last year and have started the internal fit-out in between ongoing commitments. Still plenty to do including connection of 3 phase power, bathroom facilities to complete, other machinery to be resurrected etc etc. However, I have been very keen to get started on a lathe project having not done anything for more than 5 years. I decided to have a shot at a big piece of pine that had been sitting outside for the whole time we have been a the the new place.

It is a section of trunk from a couple of big golden pine hybrids that we felled at the original house prior to moving. They just grew too big too quickly for where they had been planted so I dropped them and kept a few sections of the trunks for future playtime and as a memento of the old property, sentimental fool that I am. The pieces are sections around 500mm-550mm long and split down the middle, so they form a square around 500 x 500 with a rounded back. Unfortunately, their life on the outside of the shed has seen considerable deterioration.

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It was a really good opportunity to clean up the Vicmarc VL300 and give it a run, and also to use the beautiful Vicmarc bowl chisels I had never used. Great pieces of engineering - all of it. I found a Gary Pye 90mm chuck without having to look too hard through my boxes of stuff, so screwed that on to the Vicmarc - probably too small but it will do. I turned my attention to the chunk of pine and knocked the corners off it with a little electric chain saw and cut a mortise into it with a forstner bit. That's when I began to discover just how compromised the timber was.

Significant white ant damage was evident throughout the piece along with some associated wood rot in parts, combining to make this a potentially dubious and unstable proposition. Was this even going to be worth the trouble... even for the sentimental value? I should add here that I am not an experienced turner - not at all. I've made total of 8 or 10 bowls and have no spindle experience whatsoever. However, I had immediately discovered a passion for segmented bowls and I seemed to be naturally good at the geometric/joinery process - probably due to my carpentry background. I also have an impressive collection of equipment, having continued to acquire machinery & ancillaries during my 5+ year hiatus from shed time, but maybe this was going to be beyond my limited ability.

So anyway, I fitted the big chunk onto the Gary Pye chuck and moved the spindle centre up to it to keep it relatively stable. This was a really big, uneven lump of timber - the biggest I have attempted. I continued to hack at it with the chain saw to get it into a shape where I could begin to spin it without the lathe jumping all over the floor. Then I applied the big Vicmarc bowl chisel and began the thock-thock-thock process of trimming it into a reasonable round, gradually increasing the speed as I went. Just enough speed to take it up to where it began to vibrate and then backing off a little.

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It became immediately obvious just how much deterioration there was in the piece, and it was impossible to prevent tear-out around the white ant & rot cavities. Further, several cracks and knot inclusions added to the instability of the piece and bits started flying off the rim even at moderate speed. I had sharpened these beautiful Vicmarc gouges and they were cutting this stuff like butter, but it was not going to hang together without some assistance. I started to get an idea, and will continue the thread shortly for those who may be interested.

It looks big and dangerous, I take a seat in the back row.
Out of the firing range.

Cheers Matt.

Hello Hardenfast,
Just a small suggestion. You may find giving the piece 2 or 3 coats of a wood hardener will stabilise the rot and white ant damage (if not too bad). Costs about $20+ a bottle.
I only say this, because I do not want you to become frustrated because of the destruction. Anyways, just a constructive comment. Drillit.

Thanks for your concern Matt. Caution is definitely required with this one.

Thanks also Drillit. Some form of stabilisation is a must before proceeding with any further turning, otherwise there may be some irrecoverable consequences. I will post some further images to demonstrate what I have in mind for that. I am also considering some form of resin injection into the termite/rot tunnels once it gets nearer to final shape... maybe with some dye-colour to highlight the various defects as a feature. Haven't used resin before so this will be a very experimental project.

Great to see you back in a workshop and having a bit of fun. As Matt said, I will stay well out of the firing line in case you get a little too enthusiastic.

I wonder how long it will be when you start wishing you had built a bigger shed?

Happy turning,
Alan...

Thanks Alan - nice to see you're still around.

It somehow feels a little guilty to be indulging in some turning with so many other things still on the agenda, but bugger it. And yes, the shed seems to be getting smaller by the day as each piece of equipment gets moved in. I'm sure it will be fine... it's just a matter of establishing a position where everything has working working room around it and then connecting power and dust extraction etc accordingly. I'm around your age and time seems to be flying by now, which is why I think I need to have some play time.

Hi hardenfast, life is too short to turn crappy wood ! :U
Get yourself a nice bowl blank and enjoy...........
Nice lathe , nice tools , nice shed.......you need a nice piece of wood.....:;

I agree with the above.
Was even thinking you could glue up a big block of MDF, or even asbestos and have more fun.

Yes, this piece of pine is pretty bad, Smiife and Bodger - just a reminder of our previous residence, really. I'm treating it more as a training exercise than anything else and without any real expectations of producing a stunningly finished piece. Still, I'm wondering if I can make something worthwhile out of it without wasting too much time. I'll show you what I've got in mind shortly.

I decided to hollow out the piece somewhat to see how deep the termites had tunnelled. Yep, pretty much all the way by the look of it. I stopped digging there and flattened off the top for the next process.

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I figure the best way to stabilise the rim of the piece is to do a little segmenting and affix a new upper perimeter to the pine. It will also dress it up a little for appearance. Keeping with the crappy old timber theme I dug out some pieces of Australian Cedar which I had taken off a very old & broken cabinet years ago. The boards had been living outside with the pine trunks and were also brutally weather beaten. I didn't need much of it for the octagonal rim I had in mind.

I'm afraid I didn't take pictures of cutting up the segments. Suffice to say that I ran these bits of Cedar through a little Makita bench saw with a nice sharp blade to create 9 pieces (1 spare) of finely sawn and nice looking deep red Australian Cedar - looks like real old-growth timber. As anticipated, this stuff was in perfect condition once the outside weathering was removed, and it even still smelled like Aus Cedar while sawing - beautiful. No need to run them through a thicknesser as the finish achieved straight off the saw was perfectly acceptable for the glue-up process. To add a little contrast to the Cedar I found a very dirty piece of Kauri Pine which had formed a tread from a 100 year old set of stairs we demolished years ago, and I will cut small slices off this to insert between the Cedar segments. These Kauri slices need to be cut off as end grain so that they show as side grain when turned. Does that make sense?

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I cut out a piece of 16mm pyneboard on the bandsaw to the diameter of the bowl and did a basic setout of the segments. I cut these very quickly and simply on the drop saw set to 22.5 degrees. You can see one of the Cedar segments and the Kauri slices on the pyneboard circle, as well as the original piece of Cedar and the old Kauri tread. Because the segments were only around 190mm long I was able to cut around the old mortise trenches in the Cedar panel. The 22.5 cuts off the drop saw turned out to be fantastically accurate. I glued the individual segments + slices into two semi circles, and when I matched the semi circles together they fitted perfectly. I didn't even have to fine-sand them prior to glueing the completed octagonal ring into a single piece. I then glued the ring onto the previously levelled rim of the bowl.

Then there is the issue of how to chuck this monster back onto the lathe. I utilised the pyneboard as a glue-block because it was quite accurately set out and glued this to the octagonal rim. I had pre-drilled a centre hole in it to try and keep everything as symmetrical as possible. I didn't think that the 16mm pyneboard would be stiff enough as backboard so I screwed an additional piece of old 18mm form-ply to it so I can cut a chuck-mortise into the ply. I think it will be quite solid.

That's as far as I've got and I'm interested to see how smoothly it spins when I put it back on the chuck - maybe this weekend? It sounds like a lot of work but the whole process of cutting the segments and slices and glueing them together took less than an hour, not counting some time in between for the glue to dry. I usually set some pieces together and then head off on another chore while the glue dries - at least 5-6 hours - and then glue-up another section when I get back to it. I also dug out my brand new 150mm Vicmarc chuck and set it on the VL300 ready for the next bit. Note a glimpse of the new Hegner VB36 in the background of the last image. Nearly ready for a test run now.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by smiife

Hi hardenfast, life is too short to turn crappy wood ! :U
Get yourself a nice bowl blank and enjoy...........
Nice lathe , nice tools , nice shed.......you need a nice piece of wood.....:;

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Wayne, I could not possibly agree more. By your own admission you have little experience with bowls, I find it incredible that you picked this piece of wood that only increases the pressure. I can understand the idea that some thing nice can come from such a piece. If you have difficulty getting a better block of wood, glue some bits together to turn. Yes there is a challenge there, but is the end product worth the effort???

Jim

G'day Jim - nice to hear from you.

I've taken great pleasure in your posts over the years, particularly your segmented works of art. I can remember meeting you once at one of the forum get-togethers at a member's house in Western Sydney years ago - can't remember exactly where. Anyway, I think the consensus of opinion is that this piece of pine is not worth the effort. I tend to agree.... but I'm going to persevere. Mainly because my wife would like to have something of note from the previous residence we built, and this is it. I had always intended to do something with this piece earlier and while it was still in good shape, but time of course slipped away.

What I have in mind is to actually clean out the termite tunnels and fill them with clear resin. Maybe this is a little ambitious and/or optimistic, but it should serve two purposes. Firstly, in addition to filling the termite galleries I will coat the whole bowl with the resin as well. This will serve to bind & stabilise the timber and make it much easier to turn. Secondly, once it is more stabilised I will turn it to a much thinner section, anticipating that the tunnels will be visible right through the resin and that light will penetrate it when you hold it up.

One of my favourite videos by Brendan Stemp showed him making a bowl out of a very weathered rural fence post with large cracks in it. Once he had filled it with resin and turned it down the effect of light coming through the translucent voids was quite amazing. The piece of old fence post (White Mahogany?) was certainly a piece of firewood to begin with, but he produced something great from it. I hope to get a similar effect, albeit a little more modest. I won't spend too much time on it just in case it fails. I managed to spend another 20 mins on it today and will keep it to little sessions like that, in between other chores. Next project will definitely be a segmented piece.

Not sure what has happened to Brendan by the way. He has apparently given up turning all together and shut down his videos... he's even selling off his turning gear now. That's a shame.

So I got the chance to spend another 20 minutes on the crappy bowl this afternoon. I cut a forstner-mortise into the formply base plate and mounted it onto the chuck with the spindle centre drawn up to hold it solid. I actually made a little video as a matter of interest (link below) - first effort at that.

I also took a couple of images after I had reshaped the base a little and began merging the newly fitted octagonal Aus Cedar rim. I'll leave it with the octagonal shape, which takes the overall width out to around 500mm. The parts of the pine which aren't termite affected actually look quite good with some nice grain figure. Probably could have been a decent outcome had I started it 5 years ago. At least it's well seasoned now. :) I'll experiment with a bit of resin shortly.

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Coming up nicely.
Just as a suggestion - to be described when finished not as "first bowl in five years" but as "five years in the making" ?
:)
phil

When you see what some of the YouTube turners work with this is a walk in the park. At least you've got the gear and the space to give it a red hot go.

I reckon you're onto a good thing there, keep it up.

Cheers
Redbeard

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