Hickory serving platter project

 Hello Again,

Ok, here's a new project-a hickory serving platter. 

Unfortunately the purple heart bowl won't be this summer's project but I do have an equally challenging project to do-turning a large serving platter out of American hickory.

Discussion

A couple of years ago I purchased a large tranche of lumber from my friends at Forest Products Supply and among the pieces was a wide cutoff piece of hickory from a tree slab. It's about 2 inches thick, square in shape, and about 18 inches wide. From that I cut out a circular turning blank about sixteen inches in diameter and that's is what is mounted on the lathe right now. 

Plans

I've mounted the blank on a six inch diameter turning plate. Since my bandsaw is out of order at the moment, we cut off the corners, and I've turned it into a circle. When the underside is done, I'll flip it over, hollow it out and finish it with salad bowl finish so it can be used for serving food.

Let's take a look at some of today's photos:

This will be the top of the platter eventually and the bottom photo will be the underside. If you look carefully at the bottom you can see how we nipped off corners to round off the shape a little. This also shows the grain pattern, which is really pretty:

Here in this photo you can see that I've flattened the edge and the underside of the blank. In the center is a large, round mortise that vice will fit into when it's time to turn the blank over and mount it on the lathe: 

Here you can see the markings for the foot of the bowl, the mortise, and the underside of the edge which will be removed so someone can slide their fingers underneath and easily pick up the platter:

And here is the underside of the platter after about an hour's work. The foot of the platter and the mortise are very clear in the photo and the underside of the edge is gone too. 

I'm not sure if I'm going to do anymore turning on this side of the platter so I'm going to stop and look at it a bit before proceeding. 
I'm going to need to get some more sanding discs tomorrow to smooth the surface. Once that's done, I'll give it a coat of General Finishes Salad Bowl finish and then it will be time to flip it over and work on the top:

Ok, my hands are hurting so I'll stop here. See you tomorrow.

VW