Life's Too Short...

Vaughn McMillan

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I spent an hour or more last night trying to find the hollow form hiding in a piece of spalted flame maple that I bought on eBay. The blank looked nice, but I knew as soon as I saw it in person that it was a punky piece of spongewood. After putting it off for a few months, I finally chucked it up last night and saw that it was worse than I'd expected. Regardless of my tool choice or presentation, I couldn't get rid of the tearout (up to 1/4" deep in places. So I tried the 80 grit gouge, and although it smoothed things up quite a bit, because of the differing hardness throughout the wood, the more I sanded, the more out of round it became. Within minutes it was at least 1/4" out of round. So...back to the bowl gouge to true it back up, then a heavy slathering of wood hardener.

I put it back on the lathe tonight, and tried sanding it again. It became apparent real quickly that it was going to get lop-sided again, so I tried the gouge one more time. Yep...more tearout craters, even with my most careful shearing cut.

After about 5 minutes of this nonsense, I said to myself "life's too short to turn junky wood". Then I turned off the lathe and removed the piece from the chuck.

With a hammer. :p

CIMG1185 800.jpg CIMG1189 800.jpg

It felt good. ;)

I've only given up on about four pieces of wood in the year or so that I've been turning, but this one called for the "hammer test" in a big way.
 
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