Barry,
I feel your pain brother. I've got a 15" cherry bowl that I have been
working on and it is driving me crazy. No matter how I cut or scrape, oil
lubrication, wax lubrication water lubrication, I could not get the wood to
cut without tearout. I finally got the tearout down to a minimum and
resigned myself to using the 80 grit gouge. Again trying every lubrication,
power sanding and hand sanding. No matter what I could not remove the
previous grits marks. Well after 3 hours of sanding just the inside I
thought I finally had a pretty good finish. I put some water on it to raise
the grain and sanded that off only to find I still had some pretty bad
scratches. ARGHHHHH!!!!! Then I tried to add a texture band to the outside
using the Sorby texturing tool (which I have had great success with on other
woods). Well this cherry just refused to be textured, the tool just
wouldn't cut a pattern into it. I have no idea why. I finally opted for a
wire brush texture. At this point I'm afraid to try sand the outside, I
don't think I can handle another 3 hours of sanding without going off the
deep end.

Some pieces of wood just refuse to enter the after life of bowldom and would
rather burn in Hades (or the fireplace). Thanks for sharing your pain.
Tony Manella
ndd1"at"prolog.net (remove "at")
http://home.ptd.net/~ndd1/
Lehigh Valley Woodturners
http://www.lehighvalleywoodturners.com/

"Barry N. Turner" wrote in message
news
Does anyone in the NG believe in predestination as it relates to wood?
Have
you ever considered that some bowl blanks may be predestined to be
firewood
while others may be headed for galleries?

You see, I have this nice Black Walnut bowl blank which I thought was
certain to become a nice walnut bowl and end up in a gallery or at least a
craft shop. Well, its seems I don't know much about predestination, for
it
seems in spite of my best efforts this Black Walnut blank is hurtling
through time and space towards someone's fireplace.

Last week, I posted about problems I was having getting a smooth cut on
the
outside. Tonight, I was hollowing the inside and got a catch. The 2"
foot
ripped right off the bowl and it went sailing across the shop. I glued
the
foot back on and will try yet again to help this bowl reach its
gallery/craft shop. Or, should I just fast-forward a few hours, accept
fate
and toss it back into the firewood pile from which it came?

After all, who am I to tamper with destiny?

Barry