A few months back I posted pics of a mound of holly that I got, off a friend. It was extremely heavily spalted and wild with colour, but I had too much of it and I knew too little about working it, so I fear that much of it is going to be wasted because it's cracking seriously badly. I'd cut it up into bowl-sized pieces and waxed the ends, but the grain is so distorted that there's end grain on every single surface. I guess that what I need to do is to use this lot to get some practice in, then just get a couple of pieces at a time to work on in the future.
I got the edge down to about 3mm, but couldn't go any thinner because of all the cracks, and I found hollowing out the foot an impossible task....can anyone give me a tip on how to do it? What I did was to mount a block of waste wood in my chuck, turn a gentle curve on the end of it then trap the bowl against it, pinning it into place with a revolving centre in the tail-stock, but the revolving centre was too big and it didn't give me any room to get a tool into the foot to hollow it....so it's messy, to say the least!
All advise will be gratefully accepted....Les