Pet Urn, continued-selecting the wood and roughing out the blank

Hi Everyone,

I've heard back from my friend and she indicated that the black walnut block would work the best along with a canister shape so that's what I'll be turning.

Here's some photos of the preliminary steps:

This is a section of a black walnut tree that a friend of mine harvested 4 years ago during a huge storm. As the tree was full of water when it fell, it has taken 4 years of drying to make it usable:

 Here I've split the wood into two pieces with a 4lb. mallet and a steel wedge. This is the easiest way to divide up a section of a tree trunk. Certainly much easier than sawing it:

In this photo you can see that I've split off the corners and rounded it. Total elapsed time from tree section to turnable blank is about 45 seconds. Way to go:

And here it is on the lathe ready to go. I'm going to turn it into a cylinder:

As the wood is dry, turning it is a breeze. Here it is after about 20 minutes of turning. I've marked off the ends of the urn. You can see the "eye" of the wood beginning to become visible:

The urn will need a lid and I've got 4 choices here. Clockwise they are Australian cypress, goncalo alves, rock maple, and hickory. I like the hickory one the best:

And that's where I am as of right now. Later this week I'll turn the body of the urn first and then the lid.
See you then,

VW