The log blank was given to me by my sister and brother-in-law in 2012 from a walnut tree that had been lying in their woods for a few years. The sap wood had completely rotted but the core of the log was in good shape.
Cut in half:
Trimmed and then turned rough:
This bowl was turned rough in June 2012 and allowed to dry slowly, being weighed every few months.
Finally got back to it in the fall of 2017; the rough turned blank was turned to its final dimensions (14" x 6"); and then in January, 2018 I finished it up.
After turning the inside and shaping most of the outside, I had to devise a jam chuck to turn the tenon off the bottom. (My Cole chuck was too small for this bowl.) I had a 20" diameter piece of 3/4" MDF board that was glued together with a couple of pine blocks. I drilled a hole in the smaller one and inserted a wormwood screw – like so:
I super-glued a piece of 1/4" rubber mat that I had lying around onto the front of the MDF to make a non-skid surface. After finding the center point of the bowl (I had sanded off the little divot earlier to fit the tenon into the scroll chuck) I pulled up the tail stock and centered the bowl on the jam chuck.
I turned off the tenon down to a small nub that I subsquently popped off with a chisel. Then I sanded the bottom and applied walnut oil:
The bowl was sanded through the grits from P60 to P1000 and Mahoney's Utilty Walnut oil appled in several coats.
Final bowl, bottom views
180o view
Top view
