Tidying up in the yard I decided to do something about the cleft halves of a birch trunk I'd been planning to make into the base of a half log lathe. I don't need them for a lathe right now as in the end I made a lathe from oak offcuts. Before cutting up for firewood it occurred to me that the clefts might be the right size for bowl blanks.
To my surprise it appears that I've accidentally managed to spalt the birch quite well. by leaving it standing on end for a year or more. I didn't know how well it would turn as some parts will be quite seasoned and hard whilst others will be slightly rotten and softer. There is only one way to find out.
Not exactly what was in my list of urgent tasks for the day, but then the important things always seem to get left behind so this makes a pleasant change.
The outside of the bowl turned much more easily than my first bowl. Probably a combination of things, as I made a better blank, improved the tool rest and followed Paul Atkins excellent hints for locating the centre of the blank on the lathe.
The inside proved much harder to turn than the outside. To turn the insde of the blank you have to remove a lot wood which was from the middle of the log and I think this was more seasoned and less spalted which would not have been the case if the log had been left in one piece rather than cleft.
I was pleased that I had less trouble with the end grain fluffing up, possibly because the wood was harder so less likely to fluff and partly because the hardness forced me to keep the tools as sharp as I could.
The end result is satisfying, I wonder if I've got the bug? Time will tell. I think I might need a demonstration bowl lathe, damn I've just used the logs!
1 comment:
Nice one Mark.
Let's hear it for Birch!
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