An unfinished bowl that my wife likes.....

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I came into a large amount of maple burl recently...green.....fresh cut and sealed......My wife has never been too excited by bowls or NEs that I turned....she's more of a "what function?" person.....Until I brought this in last night.

It's a plain utility shaped bowl...I"m guessing 6" wide 3" high wall thickness 3'8"............I rough turned this 4 weeks ago...DNAd it and it's been wrapped in 2 layers of newspaper for about 3 1/2 weeks....It's not finished ...I need to turn the tenon off the bottom and sand the bottom. Wood....maple burl with some burl...a bark inclusion on the bottom.....some stripes....

Whatcha think?

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Ken,

Here's a stupid newbie question:

"I need to turn the tenon off the bottom and sand the bottom"

How will you do this? Do you have a special chuck that grips the top edge of the bowl? Or is there some trick I'm missing?

Thanks,

Bill
 
Bill.........I have a donut chuck I made out of 2 pieces of plywood.

1. Take a piece of plywood cut roughly to a circle with a jig saw to the max throw of your lathe. In my case, 9" for my Jet mini.

2. Mount it to your face plate; spin it up and turn it perfectly round.

3. Take another piece same size and using double-sided tape, mount it to the first one. Then turn it to match the first one.

4. With it still taped to the first one, drill 3 or 4 holes near the outer edge for say 1/4-20 bolts.

5. Remove the 2nd disk and cut a hole in it say, in my case for example, 5" hole. So the 2nd disk is now a ring.

6. Using either 1/4-20 bolts and wingnuts and washers or 1/4-20 T-nuts you place your unfinished bowl on the first disk mounted on your face plate and capture it with you 2nd disk. The bolts and wingnuts or t-nuts capture it. Using your tailstock, you center the "hole" in the tenon (left by your tail stock in the beginning turning) over the live center and tighten the bolts. Now the bowl is pretty well centered and captured between the disk and ring you created and the tenon is sticking out through the hole in the ring.

7. Spin it up; check to make sure the bowl is properly center ie. turning true; turn off the tenon and/or form a foot and sand.

A lot of people pad the surface of the disk and the ring where they might touch the bowl so as not to damage the bowl.

Ready for finishing.

I hope this makes sense.
 
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Bill, I'm not Ken, and there are no "Stupid Newbie" questions, we have all been where you are, so don't worry about asking questions!

There are lots of ways to turn the tenon away on the bottom of a bowl.

The simplest way, is to turn the bowl around, so the top of the bowl goes over the chuck, (put a piece of foam or something in there, so the chuck does not mark the inside of the bowl) and bring the tail stock and live center up to the tenon. There still should be a nub in the center of the tenon there for the tip of the live center to go into.

Carefully tighten up on the tailstock to apply pressure against the bowl.

Then, with very light cuts, turn the tenon away, and sand as much as you can, there will be a small nub left, where the live center is riding, you can then, carefully cut the nub away from the bottom of the bowl. If that is too exciting, then you can remove the bowl from the lathe, and with a sharp chisel remove the nub, and then sand the bottom of the bowl and finish it.

There are other ways, I like the "Donut Chuck" (Google it for TONS of info).

It is basically a chuck that gets mounted on a faceplate, it has a flat solid ring at the back and a ring with a hole in it on the front (thus a "Donut" Chuck), here is a pic.............

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A vacuum chuck it the Cadillac in this department, I really would like to get one of them going :D
 
Ken another way that I have used is with my chuck I take a piece of pvc 3" or 4" by about three inches long.Place it on the chuck with the jaws inside or around the outside (depends on your size of chuck),then place a rag over the exposed end the place your bowl on and use the tail stock to hold the bowl against the pvc pipe ,turn at a low speed and take small cuts, When you get down to the end you can chisel the numb or sand it. I learned this method from Bill Grumbine's video's,and it works well until you can buy a setup for your chuck or build one.
Good luck Ken
 
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