Maple Bowl

Another bowl from Brandon and Sharon’s japanese maple tree. I gave this bowl to Sharon for her birthday.

It was rough turned and allowed to dry for several months. At first I turned a dovetail in the bottom but a weak spot caused it to break out while I was turning the inside.

So I filled the dovetail with a piece of turned 2 x 4 and epoxied it to the bottom and screwed a faceplate to it. And allowed it to dry/warp for another month. The maple had become very hard at this point and I was getting a lot of catches even while taking very light cuts and being very careful. I tried using a scraper to remove the gouges made by the catches and got catches with that – a very difficult piece to turn. I got a catch and the epoxied tenon broke off. So I made another one and glued it on and eventually, as a result of another nasty catch, it snapped off as well.

So I mounted it the Cole jaw chuck and turned the remainder of the tenon off and turned some of the bottom off so I could turn a ~4″ diameter tenon in the maple and reverse mount it in the 4 jaw chuck with new 100 mm jaws. (had been using 50 mm jaws before in expansion mode). After nearly giving up several times,  I turned the piece very carefully with a sharp scraper and fresh cutters on the EasyWood Tools (the rougher and the finisher) with very, very light cuts – it took a long time but in the end well worth it.  As with most things, persistence is the name of the game.