The Ash log, 36 cm diameter, cut to length on 40 cm.

For this kind of turning between center’s, I make use of a small faceplate, which is converted in a tree prong center.
This idea was adopted from Tracy Owen, who writes regular in this magazine.
This is a very sturdy device for turning big lumps of wood between center’s.

Picture 3

Getting hands on, roughing out with a 16 mm. / ⅝” bowl gouge.
With the frequency inverter I tuned the speed just below shaking of the lathe, which would be about 300-400 rpm.

When the wood is in balance, the speed is turned up to about 600 rpm and the shaping gets started.

The outside shape roughly ready, forming a slightly concave surface on the bottom end for a good fit on the faceplate.

The faceplate mounted, using 6 x 50 mm. screws.

Re-shaping after mounting on the faceplate.

Drilling a hole with a saw tooth drill in a home made extension shaft.

Starting the hollowing process.
Because the bowl is cut from a log, this means the grain is running length wise and the hollowing is done in end grain.
Some years ago I visited a woodturning demo by Willy Vanhoutte in Belgium, here I saw a woodturner using the Andre Martel hook tool.
Seeing how easy end grain hollowing was with this tool, I bought me a small and medium hook tool and experimented a lot with it.

It needs a lot of practice with this tool, but once mastered, it performed like gouge, cutting the wood downhill, with the grain. The cut is started in the center and is pulled outwards to the rim.
The tool starts with rubbing the back of the hook against the wood, then turn it anti-clockwise until the cutting starts.
To control the dept of the cut, you simply rotate the tool, clockwise for finer cuts and anti-clockwise for heavier cuts.

Once mastered, this tool is a delight to hollow end grain, large ribbons of shavings flying of.
It offers a quick way to hollow end grain and the surface left is very smooth.
But attention and concentration is needed, this tool can be very aggressive when turned to far over to the left.

The pre-turning process completed, wall thickness is left to about 38 mm. / 1 ½”.
The end grain and outside was treated with “End Seal”, a paraffin wax, to protect the wood against drying to quickly.
The inside was left untreated.
The pieces weight and date was written on the bottom of the foot.

This amount of shavings was left from one single piece.

Disaster !!!!!!!!!!

After a storage period of 1 ½ year they looked like this.
The left one can be saved, but the right one was ready for firewood.

I hate this kind of developments, but from the other side it gives food for thinking.
This was the moment my brains started making overtime.
I refuse to make firewood from such pieces.
It took me about six month's to come up with an idea which could work out.
The rough idea was to re-turn the bowl to shape, cut it in half and add a sheet of stainless steel in the gap.

So far so good, getting started.

The data’s on the bottom. 

October 15e 2005 weight 7 kg. 

March 27e 2007 weight 5 kg.

To stabilize the split bowl, a piece of scrap wood was glued into the split.

Truing up the outside with the 5/8” bowl gouge.

Re-shaping the inside, using the Martel hook tool.
Using a curved tool rest, giving more support closer to the surface, to give less vibrations.

This is a well known tool for a lot of turners, a square steel bar of  20 mm. , with the cutter head ground under 45 degree and with an interchangeable cutter.
This is a homemade tool, and the shaft can slide in and out of the handle and locked in place.
With this tool I shear scrape the inner surface.

Sanding the inside with a 2” sanding pad, using grids from 120 to 400.
Here I’m using a drill extension shaft to reach in to the deeper part of the bowl.
I simply hold it by hand and this works very well.

Picture 22

Re-shaping the outside with the roughing gouge.
The roughing gouge was used because it  gave less vibrations than the bowl gouge did.

Picture 23

Using the bowl gouge in a shear cutting action to smoothing the surface.
The split is visible, because the flashlight did freeze the picture.

Outside sanding with a 125 mm. sanding disc in the power drill.

Shaping the foot, in this stadium it was still a part of the design, it should becoming four cut out feet.
Later on, I had to alter the design and removed the foot completely.

Measuring out the cutting line to cut the bowl in half.
A steel rule is placed on top of the foot, exactly placed on the hart line.
With a square this hart line is taken down to the top, witch is now on the workbench.

The cutting line set out, on the other side of the bowl is the split.

Cutting the bowl in half, on the circular saw.

Flatten the bowl halves on the planer.
The safety guard was removed for the clarity of the picture.

The two halves planed flat, now the groove for the stainless steel sheets should be routed, but I didn’t know exactly how.

Here is where it went wrong with the original design.
After the cut surfaces are planed and sanded flat, the gap happens to be 40 mm. instead of the 20 mm. I had in mined.
I had bought two sheets of stainless steel, measuring 1000 x 40 x 1,5 mm. , which didn’t fit anymore.

To visualize the bowl with gap, I glued in some scrap wood with some hot glue.
I could have used the stainless steel sheets, but I had some trouble in how to make a groove of 2 mm. wide by 10 mm. deep.
Also, the bowl would becoming oval, which I didn’t wanted.
So, my brains had to make overtime again, to come up with a another solution.

I left the piece a couple of days and give myself some time to think, when I came up with the idea to fill the gap with a contrasting wood.
Therefore I choose Laburnum, it contrast very well with the white Ash.
This solution however, needs also re-designing the foot of the bowl.
I decided to cut of the foot and add on a separated foot later on.

After cutting on the band saw and sanding to the exact shape, the two pieces where glued together and left them overnight to settle.

I decided that the corners where the bowl and the Laburnum piece will glued together, should be rounded over.
Here the Laburnum outside corners are being sanded on a sanding disc, on the lathe.

The inside is sanded on a drum sander.

The two halves of the bowl where sanded on the same way.
Sanding the corners smooth, was purely handwork, going from 120 grid to 400 grid.

Before the pieces are glued together, the inside of the bowl halves are sanded with a Velcro sanding pad on the lathe going trough the grids 220 – 400.

First, the Laburnum middle piece is glued on to one halve of the bowl and left to settle the glue.
Before gluing the other halve of the bowl, the protruding ends of the Laburnum are sanded even with the Ash rim.

How to glue round shapes ??

Well, simply with some tape and cramps.

When I cut of the turned foot, I knew I had to design some kind of a foot which could mounted on later.
It was a bit of trial and error, and when I finally got the right design, I made a mould out of folded card paper to get an even design.

Cutting out the feet on the band saw and with the sanding drum on the lathe and hand sanding the feet where shaped to its final design.
They are screwed and glued to the Laburnum middle piece.
The screw holes are filled with molten wax from a furniture wax stick, in the color of the wood.

For the rim, I decided to apply a segmented ring, also from Laburnum.
Making a lay out on a scrap piece, and making a mould, the Laburnum was sawn, planed and cut to size.

After first gluing the ring pieces two by two, they where glued together after sanding the two halve rings to an exact fit.

Turning the rim on a large faceplate from scrap wood.
It was attached with a double sided carpet tape.

The rim glued on.

Because the bowl was put together off the lathe, it wasn’t exactly round anymore and because of the cut off foot, the bowl couldn’t mounted back on the a lathe again, this meant some handwork to do, to give the rim a perfect fit.

The final result.

I’m very happy with the outcome of this project, nevertheless the many changing’s in design, it has become a very nice bowl.

The tools used,
From the left:    -The square shear scraper.
                           -The Martel hook tool.
                           -Bowl gouge, I used ½” and ⅝” bowl gouge.
                           -¾” roughing gouge.

Close-up of the hook tool.