Pine Tree Bowls, continued-BIG bowl & Special Guest Turner

Hi Everyone,

I've been looking at the other half of the pine tree section from last week and decided to turn as large a bowl as possible from it. Let's take a look at today's photos:

Tree trunk or branch sections are usually irregularly shaped and tough to get ready for the lathe. In these next two photos you can see how I've sawn off the branches, and cut the length down. I've also given it a few hard whacks with an axe to help shape a little:

LOL! Here it is on the lathe. This looks like something a caveman would do! It's between centers and I'm turning it at about 150 rpm. Absolutely no faster than that:

This is the bowl after about 20 minutes of turning. It's beginning to round off but you can see we have a ways to go here:

Here is a shot of the bowl blank from the headstock end. You can see the top of the bowl is very irregularly shaped and the whole thing is still very crooked and off balance.

I took the bowl off the lathe and re-attached it with a turning spur. This drives into the wood and holds it very securely:

 Here is a photo of my youngest son Oliver. He's the primary turner today and has been an enormous help. Perhaps a chip off the old block:

You can see how Ollie has shaped the outer surface of the bowl:

The shop is full of shredded pine and it smells wonderful. It also looks like a ton shredded potatoes! It's a shame we can't cook and eat these!

Here is the bowl after about 3 hours of shaping and carefully hollowing it out. Note the knots in the wood. If we can get this to dry and not crack or distort too much, we'll have a really neat looking bowl.

This fellow is going to go into a drying bag for a month and we'll take a look at it next in mid-September.

See you then,

VW