Wood Turning Friends

One of the great aspects of wood turning is the friends you make along the way. One of the fellows at church was talking about things with another friend as they stood by the wood pile. As the friend commented on how dry the wood was he picked at a piece of bark to real bird's eye underneath. The log was about 12 feet long and around 9 inches at the butt. My friend said I could have it if I wanted. Now the log was 2 years old and had surface cracks but I still said, "sure."

I took out the saw and cut it into manageable pieces and brought it home. Even though the log was 2 years old I Anchorsealed the ends.

One of my intentions is to document the using of this log to give folks an understanding of how you might work with something like this. Everyone does it a little different but it should be fun to compare notes as I go.

more design questions

As I was thinking of design, not having had time to update more web pages for the apple hollow form, this piece and such like it came to mind. Being a hollow form of green ash it required first of all to consider the orientation of the pith. The wood will oval in the line of the pith so for a uniform piece the pith had to be parallel to the ground when standing. You can see here where it has ovalled. However, as it dried during turning (it was one of those that should have been turned at one sitting and could not be) a crack developed. This is always a possibility with pieces containing the pith but hard to anticipate.

While the first thought was something along the lines of having lots of ash and this would be good kindling, I decided to work around the crack. Design time. I stopped it from spreading with some thin CA and finished the piece as far as I could on the lathe. Then I took a wood burner and burned along the crack. This looked good so I added some leaves and more stems and leaves, this time on either end. I think it was a reasonable solution. The piece is extremely stable and the crack is not noticeable unless you know it is there.

A new piece seems to mean more questions regarding design including "Is it kindling?"