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Dr. Deb[_5_] Dr. Deb[_5_] is offline
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Default Been awhile, and it shows

I had had a piece of dogwood laying around the shop for about five years. Its not a big piece, but then dogwood does not get all that big. It was about 5 1/2-6" in diameter and about 32" long, and had a crack running along it, lengthwise, that reached almost to the center.

Knowing that turning anything out of this (down log) would be "interesting" at best, I decided to fill the crack with epoxy and bright copper flakes. The result was a dark mahogany colored streak with copper flecks in it.

I divided the log into two 5 1/2 x 16 blanks and turned two vases. The first vase was 4 1/2 x 12. The second was 4 1/2 x 14.

As I said, its been awhile since I have been at the lathe, for anything of consequence, and it showed. Catches redefined the shape of both vases, but the second one was more like what I had in mind when I started.

I might add, turning end grain on very dry dogwood is a "tad" different than turning side grain on wet wood, of any kind. ;-)

Two lessons learned:
1) I need to move the lathe (all 560lb of it) to give room for the longer boring bar to be used.
2) Practice, practice, practice. Put another way, "If you do not use it, you lose it."