More of Larry's Chocolate

Vaughn McMillan

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Here are the results of Night 2 of the Michigan Chocolate Adventures. As I did with the last one, I figured I'd bring a lot of pics for show and tell, for all you "closet turners" out there. :p

This was the bigger of the two blanks Larry sent me. (As mentioned in this thread.) It started out at 12 x 12 x 5 inches. I cut it round on the bandsaw the night before last, and if you've been following along, you've already seen the pics of that. I didn't get any pics of the blank when I first mounted it, but here is is after a minute or two of spinning. (When I remembered to stop and take a pic.) :doh: ...

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This blank didn't have any deep cracks to worry about, but Chain Saw Gulch here was going to need to be handled...

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No problem...I'll get to that in a bit. For now, I concentrated on shaping the bottom of the bowl and forming a tenon for the chuck. A few minutes later, the blank looked like this. You can see there's some nice figure in the bottom of the bowl...

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After that was done, I moved over to the other side of the blank, took a few quick plunge cuts with a Ci1 tool, and took care of Chain Saw Gulch...

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At that point, it was ready to reverse and mount in the chuck. You can see the blue lumber crayon line I used to mark the end of the part I was trying to cut away...

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A few passes with a bowl gouge to face it off, and I had this. You'll notice the grain on this side of the blank is relatively plain. If I had made this side the bottom of the bowl instead of the top, most of the nice figure on the other side of the blank would have ended up on the floor...

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Now the fun begins. :D I figure it'd be a waste to have all that nice chocolate end up on the floor as shavings, so I decided to core a small bowl out of the middle of the blank. Here's a pic of the weapon of choice, the McNaughton Bowl Saver...

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Making a curved plunge cut into a piece of wood spinning at 600 or so RPM is always gets my attention, but I did stop after cutting a bit to take a pic...

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Then another pic right as I finished cutting to the desired depth...

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Did the bowl survive? Did Vaughn make a funnel? Tune in to the next post as the Michigan Chocolate Adventure continues. :rofl:
 
Where were we? Oh yeah, I was about to pop the core out of the blank. Here ya go...

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It worked. :thumb: You can see in the pic that there was just a small nib in the middle holding it in place by the time I got done cutting. I'm still overly cautious with the coring rig, so I tend to run the knife shallower than I need to. As a result, I often end up with a real shallow baby bowl, and a mother bowl with a thick bottom that needs to be cut deeper. That was the case here.

Shallow or not, I need a tenon on the bottom of the baby bowl in order to finish the inside of it. I don't remember where I got the idea for this (Mike Mahoney's or Reed Gray's video, I think), but I just reverse the baby bowl right into the mother bowl and use the tailstock to keep the baby in place while I smooth up the bottom and cut a tenon.

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It's going to be a small bowl, and I wanted to lose as little depth as possible, so I went with a pretty short tenon. It's probably about 3/16" long, with a dovetail profile to match my jaws. The tearout and fuzzies will get handled after the roughout has dried. As small and thin as this blank is, I didn't want to get too heroic trying to get rid of tearout at this stage of the game.

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Once that was done, the baby was set aside while I finished roughing the inside of the mother bowl. It's looking very promising...

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Pretty simple form, but I think this one shows good potential...

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Now it's time for the baby bowl. This pic gives an idea how shallow the cored blank is. Almost more of a platter than a bowl...

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It didn't take too many passes with a bowl gouge to get this little puppy roughed out. Should be a nice little bowl/platter/candy dish when it's finished, though...

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Like I said, it'll be pretty shallow when it's done...

Larry's Chocolate In Progress - 40 800.jpg

At that point, both the mother and baby bowls went into the alcohol bath. I'll pull them out sometime Thursday, then after a month or so of drying, we'll continue the saga. Until then, Larry's just gonna have to sit tight. :p

For now, all that was left was the cleanup...

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:D

Thanks again Larry, it's been fun so far, and we should be seeing some neat stuff in a month or two. :thumb:
 
The bowl is going to be sumptin' scrumptious.
Fer a while I was thinking "wat a waste of beautiful wood". Then you bring out the Kelton. Glad ye heerd wat I wuz thinking. :thumb: :rofl:
Anxious to see final results.
 
That is neat. Thanks for sharing. Didn't know how the coring rigs worked. Pretty much takes care of any "catches".:lurk::lurk::lurk:

You're wrong there, Kemosabe. ;) Those curved blades are a belt-screeching catch just waiting to happen. DAMHIKT. :D Sure are handy tools once you get the hang of them, though.
 
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