Some Things Just Take (a Lot) More Time!
LESSONS LEARNED AT THE LATHE.
One day last winter, I was feeling a sense of the doldrums that come from too much gray weather and not enough shop time. A woodworking cure that usually helps me snap out of my funk is to grab one of my dried bowl blanks and turn something useful, pretty or hopefully both. I headed to the storage shed and found an enticing candidate.
Well, this particular silver maple bowl blank was gargantuan — the biggest I’ve ever turned, in fact, at roughly 14½" in diameter. It was quite out-of-round at first, but I wrangled it back into shape in an hour or so. The outer profile revealed itself, pleasingly, after another hour. By four hours in, the wall thickness was up to snuff. Finish-sanding was behind me and I was ready to flip it around, remount it on my Longworth chuck and finish-turn this behemoth by adding a subtle foot. So much for best-laid plans… This is when I learned that it was too big to fit the Longworth, which required creating
