Little ash bowl (PICs)

Re: Little ash bowl (PICs)

John Lucas

>Mike

nice bowls, both of them. I like the big one better. I'd hate to run out of that wood also. I'm not sure how your using your chuck that limits the bottom. I use a tenon and grip it with the jaws in compression mode. If you try to visualize the bowl while your turning the outside you can leave the tenon long enough to achieve any size bottom.

When you reverse turn it you clean up and shape the bottom cutting away the tenon. If you expand the jaws into the bottom it's easy to limit what you can do.

As far as the photography goes it's looking pretty good. I'm kind of guessing based on the highlights but it looks like all your lights are above and about the same power. Move one light down to the side and maybe move it forward.

Reduce the power of this light a little. That can be done several ways. One is to move it further away, not always possible in a small room. Another method is to aim the light less directly at the piece. Many reflectors have a hot spot in the middle and feathering the light up, down, left or right might make it look dimmer on the piece.

If your using diffusion panels simply put another piece of cloth on the side you want dimmer. You can tell if achieved the proper results because you will have one reflection that is dimmer than the others. I'll leave it at that for now. If you want send a photo of your setup. I can answer questions better when I know what lights your using and where they are placed.

Re: Little ash bowl (PICs)

Dave Shombert

>Hi Mike -

I like both bowls. Nice work.

If you're using a Vicmarc chuck, they make a set of jaws that can go as small as 35 mm in the expansion mode, PLUS they extend the bowl away from the chuck body. Much less scary for the fingers. I think they're called the extender jaws or something like that. Packard sells them.

I don't use a chuck all the time, but when I do I often use these jaws and in the expansion mode, i.e., I cut a dovetailed recess in the bowl. Many people prefer compression on a tenon, but I find this works pretty well. Finishing off the bottom seems easier to me this way, and I can make it pretty small by using these jaws. I wouldn't use them on anything real big, though.

What part of Maryland? I lived in Rockville for many years before I escaped.

Dave Shombert

Elkins, WV

Re: Little ash bowl (PICs)

David Eaves

>Hi Mike,

That looks great, excellent finish on the wood. I have never seen any Ash like that before too, I can see why you will be sad when you run out.

With the chucking as others have mentioned tenons that stick out more. I always feel I'm wasting wood though. I've got some jaws which can do expansion down to 25mm too. They're alright but you have to watch you don't overstress the wood turning, otherwise it goes to be redesigned on the floor :o)

After an initial spell of expansion chucking I seem to be leaning more towards using Tenons for stuff now.

Photography is looking good, as John said if you move some lights in from the side and underneath you will be able to light the sides of the bowl.

Thanks for posting

David

Re: Little ash bowl (PICs)

Mike Rubes

>Hi Mike,

I think the pics look fine, thanks for posting. It's nice to see ash bowls, we don't seem to see many of them here and it is one of my favorite woods to turn. That's a great finish on the small bowl as well.

Insofar as the shape, I am not a really good one to ask as I generally like all the shapes of bowls! Certainly some work better than others, but as long as the shape seems to "flow" to me, I like it. I think the small one and the big one works fine. The only suggestion I would make, and it is just a suggestion, is that you might consider making the foot on the smaller bowl a little smaller and curving down to it. That seems to be what you do with the bigger bowl and it works really well.

Similar to that post Wally made a week or so ago, a really good shape works regardless of the size of the piece. Just imagine the big bowl in 1/4 size :)

Good luck, thanks again for the pics.

Mike

Loving the smell of fresh turned ash in Apex, NC!!!