Lobby Dosser wrote:
"robo hippy" wrote:


I have never been able to take a turned bowl and run it through the
bandsaw. It may be just because I am too cheap. I mean why ruin a
perfectly good (or maybe not perfect) bowl that will sell for $25 or
more, just to see if the walls have a perfect thickness. Use calipers (
I like the bent wire kind that I saw on the David Elsworth videos),
then run your hands and fingers over the inside and outside of the
bowl. You can feel any bigger bumps, and smaller ones will sand out. I
can measure from the rim of the bowl to the bottom, and see if the
thickness is consistant, but cut it in half? Never.
robo hippy



You do get a better view of the form when you cut a piece in half. If you
look at the 'whole', you are distracted by finish and grain. When you look
at the cut edge of a piece you are seeing unadorned Form and can learn a
lot from it.

Rather that cut the bowl in two and make fancy firewood, Feel it. I can
feel the thickness of a bowl and tell if it's uniform throughout or not.
I'm sure that most turners can. I agree with the others that it seems
a waste of time, effort and money to willingly destroy something I made
just to determine wall thickness which can be determined by other means.
Furthermore, does it really matter if the wall of a bowl is a uniform
1/8" or 1/32" thickness throughout or if the thickness varies from 1/8"
to 1/4" as long as the shape and finish pleases the eye?