C & S wrote:

Charlie,

One thing that you may want to add to your wonderfully illustrated
explanation: the branch cut parallel to the ground will yield bowls with
more symmetric grain, which IMHO is much more desirable than a little bit
bigger blank.

Regards,

Steve


Steve:

It's not clear to me what you mean by
"the branch cut parallel to the ground will yield bowls with
more symmetric grain"

Look at Illustration A & B on the following page I earlier
pointed to.

http://web.hypersurf.com/~charlie2/T...insawing3.html

In both cases, the log is cut into two "halves" - along the
Pith Line, "A" leaving the same amount of tension and
compression wood in each "half" while "B" leaves all of
the tension wood in one "half" and all the compression
wood in the other.


One interpretation of the "parallel" part of your statement
would be as shown on this temporary page I just put up for
purposes of discussion.

http://web.hypersurf.com/~charlie2/TemporaryStuff.html

Rather than cutting along the pith line, this method would
cut THROUGH the pith line at an angle - determined by
a line parallel to the ground when the branch section was on
the tree.

Is that what you had in mind? If not, could you clarify a bit
and I'll try and illustrate it.

charlie b