Oak burr N/E bowl

[Les Symonds]

I started this bowl last night and gave up on it after a while. It caught my knuckles on the rim whilst sanding the inside and I really needed to do something about the blood before I carried on, so it sat in the workshop waiting for me to pluck up courage to continue work on it. Then along came Pete (bodrighywood) - not into my workshop, but into this forum with his N/E bowl and it spurred me on to get mine finished. I've taken the base down to 3mm thickness, so that you can see right through several knots and splits, but to achieve this I had to leave quite a solid foot-ring, otherwise I'm sure that the whole thing would have shattered.

This first shot shows the real colour of the piece....



...but these next few shots were taken an hour or so later and the natural light was too poor, so I had to use flash, which has darkened the colour considerably.






Thanks Pete for the tip about finishing it....I took your advise and use carnauba on a polishing mop that I'd bought for the inside of goblets etc.

Comments and criticisms always welcome....Les

p.s. ... this is the little brother...his big brother is sitting on the shelf in the workshop and is 12" diam x 8"high....I'll tackle it one day soon!

[Bryan Milham]

Les,

I have a different solution.

I have turned several stems of different lengths, which I can lock into my 4 jaw chuck. On the end is a foam pad and then a piece of Velcro 'hook'.

Much the same as people who put their inertia sanding heads into a Jacobs chuck and put that into their headstock.

But by using wood I know I won't damage my turning it I touch the edge while I am sanding the inside. And as I said, I can make them different lengths.

One other advantage, as I move the turning over the abrasive, the centre of rotation constantly varies and I don't get those concentric sanding rings that are quite common.

Too late now - but I'll try get a photo of one set up over the weekend (out to dinner tomorrow evening) and post an image for you.