Some little roughed out bowls and a slightly larger one. Little ones are from the mystery cemetery wood and the larger one is from an auction win at the local turners club- looks like it is red oak.

 

A little more work on the medium sized bowl. Definitely red oak. Found a couple of cracks buried deep inside but I think CA will fix it. Outside finished with Yorkshire Grit then a coating of mineral oil. Inside will get only mineral oil once sanded. Gonna be either a bread bowl or a  popcorn bowl- what ever Mimi decides. Probably get gifted to someone.

 

 

 

Lew, how were the diagonal cuts made around the rim?

@FrederickH  Rick, I have one of these tools. They make smaller versions. I'm still learning how to use it effectively.

The adventure continuuuueeesss.

 

I was cruising the Internet a while back and found a vessel of illusion by Trent Bosch. The idea intrigued me and with more research, I decided to give it a try.

 

Things are not going as planned. 

 

The first failure was when the vase collar was inadvertently undercut too far and the collar fell off. But pressing on undeterred, I decided to use the collarless vase- left side of this image-

 

The original, and current, idea is to have the "top" (rite in above picture" be installed inside the vase.

 

The "top" is larger than the opening- thus the "Illusion"

 

 

The top must be very thin

 

The outside profile of the top must match the inside profile of the vase. It takes some try and retry to get the profiles to match. Using a profile gauge and cardboard templates I shaped the top of the lid's profile.

 

Reversing the lid, to thin its walls, gave me an in-depth understanding why turners love their vacuum chucks. Now I wish I had one. But, a jam chuck, of sorts, will have to do.

 

Using double sided sticky tape and painter's tape to keep the lid in place allowed me to thin the wall to what I thought should be the correct thickness. A Vacuum chuck would have made removing, checking thickness and replacing really easy. Now, I wish I had one. The lid was just a little too thick. Remounted and, wouldn't you know it, now it's a little too thin

 

Making the new lid will have to wait as I need to pack up all the tools for Easy Wood Tool demos the next 2 weekends

Oops; still gonna be very cool Lew. Love the spalting of the vase body.

We always seem to keep the funnel making craft alive and well.  Hope things go better next time.  Looking good though.  

This isn't exactly on my lathe anymore. It's something I saw in a Tim Yoder video and though I might want to make one. But before committing any nice wood to it, I tried to do one out of poplar to see if it was withing my meager turning skills. So this is my prototype "box with a drawer" as Tim named it. The good thing I think I could do one if I chose, but truthfully after looking at my prototype I kind of lost interest. It just seem to have any practical use...at least to me. Now if I were to finish one the drawer would have a nice knob on it. The drawer is made by turning it round and carefully fitting it to the hole in the box, then drill the center out (I'm not good enough to hollow that out with a bowl gouge or something. Anyway here it is:

 

That is really cool and unique @Fred W. Hargis Jr practical use or not. Definitely looks like a challenging project. Well done sir.

You do have the skills and the box is quite unique.  Way to go!  Love it!  

What @HandyDan said! You DO have the skills!!!

Will the drying out of any part of that affect the fitting of the lid?

24 minutes ago, FrederickH said:

Will the drying out of any part of that affect the fitting of the lid?

Actually, the lid will need to be boiled to make it flexible enough to be bent and fitted thru the opening. The vase part was twice turned so it is pretty stable. The vase still need lots of sanding before I can put things together. I want to ebonize the lid so it is a contrasting color. The lid is white oak so ebonizing and bending hopefully work out.

Rough turning some cedar bowls today.

Sure like those EWT stickers on your lathe Lew!

3 hours ago, RustyFN said:

Rough turning some cedar bowls today.

 

Those sure have some pretty grain, @RustyFN!

Agree with Lew, some very pretty grain. Bet it smelled really good in your shop too.

25 minutes ago, Grandpadave52 said:

Agree with Lew, some very pretty grain. Bet it smelled really good in your shop too.

Yes it did. I love when I leave the shop for a little bit and then go back in and get that big whiff.

I forgot to add the first pic is 9” bowl and the other is 15”. I cored the smaller one out of the big one.

This piece was given to me by a teaching associate at the Vo-Tech school. It had been laying, exposed to the weather for a long time. The teacher is the Auto Body instructor and he was working in partnership with the Carpentry instructor to make natural edge tree rounds type coffee tables with epoxy tops. He was told the tree was flame box elder and one of the tables did have some red streaks. Most of what I got was badly rotted, punky and splitting.

I know that there is "Tiger" maple and "Ambrosia" maple but this is the first I've ever seen Tiger, Ambrosia and spalting together. Just wish it had some flame, too!

Still need to cut off the tenon and finish the bottom. Gonna give it to the instructor as a thank you for the wood.