NE Ash Crotch Bowl

Vaughn McMillan

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Here's another ash piece from my firewood lot stash. This is the other half of the piece of crotch wood I made the recent NE hollow form out of. It has some interesting honeycombing/wind shake/whatever in the bottom of the bowl, so using it for soup is probably out of the question, as was the vacuum chuck. The blank had a large crack on the edge that went deeper than I wanted to turn out, so I left it as-is. There are also some bug holes below the bark in one area. Here again, I just left them alone. It's 13 1/4" by 7" and finished with my same ol' same ol' Formby's, buff, and wax.

Bowl 087 - 01  800.jpg Bowl 087 - 02  800.jpg Bowl 087 - 04  800.jpg Bowl 087 - 05  800.jpg Bowl 087 - 06  800.jpg Bowl 087 - 07  800.jpg Bowl 087 - 03  800.jpg

This was another piece I used as a test run for some new cutters Craig Jackson was trying for the Ci0 tool, so all of the inside was done with round carbide cutters.

I'm interested to see your thoughts on it. :)
 
That wood sure has is going on:thumb: As you know I love your NE bowls and this is another good one:) I know cracks are not necessarily good but it sure works on this, love it. Well done Vaughn
 
Vaughn, curious as to what you used to finish up the bottom. If I remember correctly the vacuum chuck is your go to piece of equipment for that. What kind of set up did you have to hold it in place?
 
I knew the day would finally arrive that i got to see a piece of your work that simply does it for me. Utterly wonderful the way you draw something like this out of a piece of FIREWOOD:eek: .

I dont know if this is intentional or if you been influenced by images of stadiums from the World Cup in SA but the shape has hit a definite sweet spot with me. It sort of has calibash ( first picture does this for me) (not that we called them that) all over it to me, but with a new twist.

The way the edges wavy up and down and the way the seperation in the annual rings gets shown and the bark being their is the cherry on the cake like decorations on a fancy cake.

Its just my personal opinion Vaughn but I really like this one.

BTW your photography is great at bring out the best.

Thanks for showing us it.:thumb:
 
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Thanks for the comments, guys. :thumb:

Ken, I just used a friction hold to reverse the bowl. I have a variety of unfinished bowls in the shop that are rejects for one reason or another and they still have tenons on them. I found a bowl that fit inside the ash bowl, mounted it in the chuck and trued up the edge, put a piece of foam drawer liner over it, then put the two bowls mouth to mouth. I used the tailstock to hold the ash bowl in place while I turned the tenon down to a 1/2" wide nub, shaped the foot, did any finish cuts and sanding on the bottom outside of the foot. Then I carefully turned the nub down to a cone until it's free. After that I just used a power sander off-lathe to finish sanding the foot where the nub was. Lately I've been using some type of friction hold for most of the bowls and hollows forms I've done, because of voids or other features that preclude using the vacuum chuck.
 
Using an unfinished bowl is a great idea. And that drawer liner stuff can have a pretty good grip. Thanks for sharing, that's a couple of ideas I will be using in the future.
 
Using an unfinished bowl is a great idea. And that drawer liner stuff can have a pretty good grip. Thanks for sharing, that's a couple of ideas I will be using in the future.

I picked up the face-to-face bowl idea from Reed Gray's video on using the McNaughton coring rig. It's a handy way to turn a tenon on a freshly-popped core...just turn it around into the bowl it just got cut out of, then use the tailstock to hold it in place while turning the tenon.

You'd be surprised how well a bowl works for a friction chuck. The main reason I just use the shelf liner foam is to protect the inside of the bowl from scratches.
 
Agree - very nice work on the bowl and I like the natural holes along the bottom...............I do have a couple questions though....
How did you finish it ?
Can you tell me more about the round radius cutters ? can you rotate them ? how well can you cut the curve in the bowl ? etc....thanks Dan
 
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