Turning a Natural Edged Bowl Endgrain - Page 1

I cut a piece of yellow birch to rough out a typical natural edged bowl and found it to be wonderfully spalted. During the process of preparing for the bowl I cut a slice off the end of the log to get past any cracks.

This wood is too good to waste so I have decided to use the slice for this bowl. I will have to turn past the cracks but look at the spalt lines. It will have to be a fairly shallow, endgrain bowl and I am going to turn it natural edged for the appearance.

First I mount it between centers and flatten the end with all the cracks to receive a face plate.

Note the washer on the tail stock. I flatten to the washer leaving a tenon the size of the washer's diameter. The washer not only prevents the tail stock from digging too far into the piece, it is also selected to be the inside diameter of the face plate. Once the wood is off the lathe the face plate automatically centers on the wood for attachment.

The wood is fastened to the face plate with 1" long #14 self tapping sheet metal screws and remounted to the lathe.

First I turn the wood down from the face plate to get past the cracks and to get past the screws for the anticipation of later parting from the lathe.