On Fri, 3 Dec 2004 16:31:27 -0500, "Kevin"
wrote:

Hello all,

I've been turning now for a bit over a year and it has been a most enjoyable
passtime. Last night I started to clean up the shop a bit and and as in the
past when cleaning up, decided to hang on to the failed turnings on my
shelves. I really should call them errors rather then failures as I learned
a bit from each of them. There are the ones where the wood was a bit on the
punky side and the tennon tore loose; the ones where bark inclusions
magically appeared and decided on their own that I didn't want the bowl to
be as high as I'd planned, not too mention the ones I've just set aside as
the end grain just proved too darn stubborn to just go away.
Does anyone else keep reminders of this sort around their shop? I can only
hope that the distribution of the number of the bowls when plotted across
time will show a marked bias to the early days and then taper off
assymptotically as time and turning goes on.
Thanks

yep, I have my "rouges gallery".. reminds me of what NOT to try
again.. but you only fail if you give up..
I don't know if this is true, but I've read that when they asked
Edison how he managed to continue with his light bulb idea after over
1,000 failures, he said "I never failed, but I did find over 1,000
ways that it didn't work"

I added one to the collection a few nights ago... turning some walnut
the a neighbor had cut down, planning on a jar..
I guess I didn't cut enough off the end to get rid of the cracks, and
after most of the basic shape and hollowing were done, I noticed that
cracks were appearing on the faceplate end... tried to modify the
shape to avoid the new crack and cut the outside just a little too
close... it's sitting on the shelf now, with about a 3/4" hole in the
bottom..lol