Hello Darren
I've zero experience with objects as large as you are attempting but from
reading a few books it seems that taking the dia of the faceplate X 3 will
get you about the max size. I am sure many of the more experienced turners
will chime in here.
I did my largest turning thus far the other day - about a 7" hard maple
bowl. For me it is somewhat frightening even when it is fairly round. I
attached to a faceplate with 4 screws and a plywood spacer so I could get
almost to the rim. I use a roughing gouge to round out the form and then
switch to a 3/8 bowl gouge to finish. Other tools used as required.



"Darren" wrote in message
...
I have some thick pieces of walnut that I have glued up to make a large
salad type bowl. It will be about 14-15" when I am done. This thing is
heavy. To reduce the weight I cut the corners off with a bandsaw and also
cut the inside out of the top rings. This helped but it is still fairly
heavy (guessing 15+ lbs). I have turned a lot of things but have only
turned small bowls up to this point (6" or so), so this is quite a step up
for me.

Couple questions:
* How much weight is too much weight? I will be using a Jet 1442 lathe (1
hp).
* How do you mount it best? Is just a face plate ok? I can't put it
between spindles because it is too big, so I will be turning the head
stock
out away from the bed. My thought was to glue a 3/4+ plywood spacer onto
the bottom and then use 1 1/2" screws so that it goes through the face
plate, plywood and into the walnut a little (~1/2"). How big of face
plate
should I use? I only have a 4" one now - even if I put 8 screws into it,
I
think that might be not be big enough.

Any other thoughts \ advice?

Thanks
Darren