In order to lure my nine year old away from Grandma's house and her X-Box, I
dangled the prospect of turning a bowl in front of him. I had glued one of
Dave in Fairfax's generous bowl blank offerings to a glue block the night
before. I finally felt worthy of taking a crack at a piece of my beloved
and treasured walnut, and this was the only blank I had prepared for
turning. I had some reservations about letting the boy turn my precious
walnut as his first bowl, but I weighed this against the idea of leaving
him to play that stupid video game for the rest of the day, and decided to
go ahead and let him do it.
So off we go to the lathe. He had demonstrated serious aptitude for spindle
work, but had never approached a bowl before. I explained the concepts
involved, held his hand for a bit, and then went to the other side of the
shop to work on cleaning up a few messes. I just let him have at it,
looking over at him from time to time.
Once he had done a pretty good job of shaping the outside, I went back and
refined it just a smidge. Then we started in on the hollowing phase. I
once more let him have at it while I built a handy dandy depth gauge
gadget.
After hogging out most of the waste, we took turns refining the walls and
bottom, using my depth gauge thingie to get the depth just so, and feeling
our way carefully to keep the walls smooth and even.
He was satisfied that it was done, but Daddy wanted to refine it just a
smidge more, until it was perfect.
Then we sanded, sanded, sanded some more. I carefully dressed a couple of
rough tearout patches with a scraper I made out of an old bench chisel,
then we sanded some more. We went from 100 all the way up to 2,000 grit,
and the wood was so smooth when we were done that it looked to have been
finished already.
Then we got out the beeswax, rubbed some on, then melted it in with a cloth.
The bowl came alive as soon as that happened, becoming more gorgeous with
each press of the cloth.
Then I set the speed for 500 RPM and began to part off the last bit of the
bottom.
WHACK!
It tore loose and went sailing into the wall, leaving a 1" diameter hunk of
walnut stuck to the glue block.
Daddy had gotten the bottom too thin, and when I parted it off, I only left
1/32" of wood in the bottom of the bowl. It wasn't enough to handle the
stress once I got down that far into it, and the bowl was lost.
Damn, damn, damn, damn, damn!!
The up side is that it didn't crack when it hit the wall. It's a beautiful
little walnut bowl with a 1" hole in the bottom. I guess we'll make it a
container to hold a silk flower arrangement or something.
I'm still proud of the boy in any event. He's a natural turner. He'd do
better with a real teacher, instead of the blind leading the blind, but
this is what we have to work with. In my judgement, he's doing *just*
fine.
I'm going to have to buy a full-sized lathe and give him this mini sooner
rather than later, I suspect, or at least buy him his own mini. I can see
that it won't be long before we're fighting over the lathe.
It's a shame about his bowl though. A real shame.
But a good day still. I sure never did anything like this with my own Dad.
He and I did some things together to be sure, but never anything like this,
and not nearly so often.
--
Michael McIntyre ---- Silvan
Linux fanatic, and certified Geek; registered Linux user #243621
http://www.geocities.com/Paris/Rue/5407/