Woodturning Firewood to Treasure - Video

trash or treasure [Music] hi i'm kent and welcome to turn a wood bowl today we've got a piece of black walnut that is kind of in not so great shape this could easily be firewood but we're going to see if there are some treasures hiding in here now i pulled this piece out specifically because this is what really happens when we cut a bunch of wood occasionally we get a piece that gets cut a little shorter than we want and it lays around and oh we got cracks and when those cracks form it's real tempting to go well you know let's just scrap this but because this is black walnut i do not want to scrap this and i'm going to help you guys see the treasures that are hiding in logs like this so what's wrong with this log well for starters it's been sitting around too long without being treated and without being processed so that we can release some of the stress in this log and prevent these cracks that didn't occur if you want to learn more about how to take a piece of raw wood and prepare it so that it doesn't crack like this check out my tree to bowl understanding green wood online course we go over all this material in that course all right so this this has been left in its whole form and it's just been left sitting around so it's been drying and it's cracking that's a big problem the other big problem is i typically turn side grain bowls and if this were to be a side grain mounted piece it's going to need to be that long well for whatever reason this was cut much shorter this might have been the end of a log it might have just been poor planning when the when this log was cut apart it's relatively short now you might be thinking well why don't you just take this shape in and just make a bowl out of it just just turn it into a bowl and you can and that's it that would be an end-to-end turning similar to a spindle turning typically most bowls are not turned that way most bowls are turned side grain and if you were to do that you still have all those cracks to deal with and they're just going to continue so what we're going to do is we're going to do some side grain pieces from this but they're going to be smaller and we're going to work around the existing cracks so let's go ahead and get started with this i'm going to show you how i'm going to go through this and process it okay so right off the bat we know we've got some issues with the bark the bark's already been popped off because of the expansion of the wood back here so i'm going to try to chisel some more of this off we're not going to be able to do a live edge with this just looking for a little gap there where i can get the chisel in between the bark and the wood it's always a good idea too if you have a wood where the bark is loose and it's not staying on very easily try to take that off early if you don't take that off and it stays clinging like this but it's loose it holds moisture up against the wood and you can have a lot quicker decay happening when that's in place okay so now we can see what we've got going on here all right well first off we have a lot of issues right here that we need to deal with we've got to we've got to avoid this pit area most of the time we want to avoid that pith so what we can do is basically just we can just mark obviously denote that we want to avoid that so this is a no-go zone and we've got a big ugly crack over here so we don't want to we don't want to mess with that we've got another one going through here those are the cracks are pretty obvious so what can we do instead in the meantime well one thing i love to do with with beautiful wood like this is to look for the quarter sawn sections we know we're going to make smaller pieces from this because it was this log was cut short so we're not going to be able to make a great big bowl out of this but we can make several small pieces now i'm looking right here you can see this crack this crack if we use the edge of that crack and we come to the center 90 degrees off the center and then we make a parallel line here we've got enough to make a nice small shallow bowl but with beautiful quarter-sawn wood right here now i'm going to try to make a small opened vessel a bowl and i'm seeing a spot here this this edge has a relatively flat it's curved but it's it's relatively flat it's not a big dramatic curve it has a flat top there so if we were to make a bowl that's shaped like this it's going to fit right in there and you can see what we might we might have with the final volt we have this lighter sap wood and darker heart wood on the bottom of the bowl so this is going to be a really nice cut right here and it's pretty much avoiding these two cracks so if we come around here now i'm seeing another section here where i can get a quarter sawn again remember we're 90 degrees off the center so anywhere coming right off that center is going to be quarter sawn wood i've got some other videos on quarter sawn wood i'll put i'll put links to those so you can see those now these cracks aren't quite as big but i've got a feeling they're going to go through there so i don't know what we're going to do here we made we may slice out a small quarter-sawn section here and maybe another one here so almost have enough for another bowl here we're going to try to get another bowl right here i'm going to see if i can cut that out and have a bowl blank right there and that'll give us another quarter-sawn section here so we can cut here and here okay so you can see what we've got here we basically got potentially one two three four five six bulb blanks or usable pieces of wood from a piece of wood that pretty much could be easily discarded as a chunk of firewood so let's take this over to the bandsaw and see what we get okay now i'm using a bandsaw obviously you don't have to have a bandsaw you can do some of these cuts in the field with a chainsaw simply mark the log like you're seeing here and rotate it around so the each cut is up towards the top and then make those cuts with the chainsaw i'm just using the band saw because it's a little simpler and it makes a little bit more accurate cut here one of the big things with cutting on the bandsaw that's super important is to make sure that your stock is flat this log has a nice flat bottom side that i'm using here that's critically important that down force of the blade will grab a piece that is not flat and supported and rip it downward and wrench it to the side and it can cause some problems and damage the blade and possibly the saw and you and all that good stuff so you want to make sure that the stock that you're cutting is good has a good flat bottom and then you're basically just going to slice and dice i'm going to cut out each of the blanks as i go this wood gets a little bit harder in the pith area which is to be expected now typically you don't want to back the material out of the blade but that's i'm kind of forced to do that here you can do it if you keep the blade running and you take just a slow motion and just make sure that the blade is not catching anywhere otherwise you're going to pull the blade off of the tires and then you're going to have problems so just if you do back up the saw blade just go very slow with it and work it out of the cut that it's made now you can see the bowl shape that's up in the top right corner that's going to be one of the more important pieces out of this the other pieces are quarter sawn sections that we'll be able to make some small pieces out of as well if you've got an open mind and you're not too disappointed about not having a great big piece of wood to turn taking a log like this and working it for all the small blanks that are inside of it can be very rewarding there's quite a bit of material in here surprisingly you can see i'm just very slowly walking that back through the path that was cut and i think it i'm going to go all the way through it here and just go ahead and separate these sections i try to maintain a five inch distance my hands from the blade at all times it's just a general safety rule that i use obviously we don't want our hand anywhere near that blade here's the other bold portion that will get out of the other half of this blank now i'm not too concerned about rounding these blanks i'm going to do the rounding on the lathe just going to get the bulk of the material removed this is a very nice quarter-sawn section right here now the quarter-sawn wood is actually really nice i've got a video about quarter sawn wood it's one of my earlier videos you should go check that out it's actually super exciting if you've got a wood that has a nice grain pattern in it using a quarter sawn section is really really nice all right this is the piece that i'm going to work with and i'm going to go ahead and square up the bottom of it just so that it mounts to the tail stock a little bit easier all right there we go i'm going to finish up this slab i'm going to go ahead and cut all the pieces at the same time now dealing with green wood had this log been cut apart like i'm doing right now several months ago these sections wouldn't have cracked the way that they cracked there's a lot of tension in them that's actually a really beautiful piece look at that got heartwood and sapwood i'm going to go ahead and round this this blank while i've got it here you always want to keep the guide down is to the highest spot of your working material when you're cutting with the bandsaw that way it's supporting the blade and it's more difficult ideally to get your hand in there you don't want to accidentally bump the blade obviously so i'm just going to go ahead and turn this so i have it for later but we're going to be working on that natural edge piece some of these cracks are running a little bit deep i'm a little concerned that they may still be visible they're a little more than just surface cracks but we'll deal with those as we come to them there you can see the pith area the center of that log okay now we've got we've got a couple blanks we've got one that's turned to a circle here look at this here are the two natural edge bowl blanks that i'm going to be working with i'm going to be working with one of these right now but we're left with six total blanks out of that one short log i'm always amazed by this process all right so i'm gonna set these aside and we're going to start working with our bulb blank now the natural edge bowl okay now with an organic piece that's cut like this it's not super circular and all that i like to use the spur drive center first and the tail stock this is going to give me the opportunity to move it around a bit as i need if i don't center it up quite right i can just loosen the tail stock and move it around to center it up what i'm going to do right now is i'm going to check the center of the top so that the two top rims should be about the same spot and they're not that side is coming up a lot higher than this side so what i do is just loosen up the tail stock a bit move the piece and then re-tighten the tail stock and i'll check those points and now they're hitting close to the same spot so that's what i'm looking for so i'll tighten up the tail stock keep that nice and snug all throughout this and the tail stock will need to continuously be tightened because it will it will become loose as those teeth are trying to dig into the front of this piece i'm going to start off with my 5 8 inch 55 degree bevel swept back bowl gouge say that 10 times fast i'm going to be cutting from the center or the bottom of the bowl up the side with the bowl gouge pointing in the direction that i'm going here you can see how i'm pointing at about a 45 degree angle because i have an uneven surface here it's real easy for this bowl gouge to bounce around the way to prevent the bowl gouge from bouncing around is to apply down pressure with your left hand into the tool rest when you're applying pressure down into the tool rest the bull gouge won't bounce around if on the other hand you're applying pressure in towards the bowl well when each gap comes through the bull god just wants to move forward and then it's going to get smacked with the next section that's sticking out a little bit and then that's where you get the violent bouncing effect so instead of pushing the bull gouge into the bowl just gliding along the tool rest and apply down pressure onto the tool rest and then each portion of the bowl that comes around simply gets sliced away as it comes around you can see the voids there if you look at the edges of this it appears as if the blank is transparent well that's just the air gaps coming by high spots and then air gaps so we need to just keep turning this and roughing this away now i use the 5 8 inch bulk gouge as my roughing gouge specifically for this purpose of just removing material it's a little bit bigger makes a little bit bigger cut and it's great for roughing out blanks and getting to the final size quicker okay so we got the sides coming down you see the curves curve of the bowls taking shape there and everything actually seems to be pretty balanced i don't really need to move anything around too much right now so i'll keep taking that down until we have a nice round piece you can be a little bit aggressive with the roughing cuts because we're not really concerned about the finish at this point especially on the end grain when you get out there on the ingredient along the edge you're going to be tearing out the ingrained fibers with a quick fast pass like that but we'll make enough other passes with a sharp finishing bowl gouge that those will all be cut off if there's any tear out out there this wood is pretty hard it is had a chance to dry quite a bit in its walnut so walnut is pretty dense and hard and it's dulling my tools somewhat significantly it's not a big deal just need to sharpen more frequently and i'm going to go do that in here in just a moment also now that i have the rough shape of the bowl started it's pretty close to the shape i don't have any wings flying around anymore i can speed the lathe up and i can get this piece turning a lot faster it allows me to make a cleaner quicker cut as well all right it's looking good i still have a few flat spots i'm going to go ahead and work on the side here and i'm just going to go ahead and level that off so i can get down to what my final material is still quite a few cracks showing through there now this cut is 90 degrees to the end grain so i'm just gonna make a sliding cut from left to right you can see that i'm using the bull gouge and i'm pointing in the direction of the cut again i'm keeping pressure down on the tool rest and essentially i'm just flexing my knees and moving in still got a flat spot there i'm just shifting my body weight from left to right that's it i'm not using my arms i'm not using my hands independently i'm locking the tool against my body and just shifting my weight relaxing my knees and shifting my weight from left to right now i'm going to use my half inch 55 degree bevel swept back bowl gouge this is going to be used to make a little bit lighter cuts and a little bit slower cuts a little bit slower on my part the lathe is moving fast but i'm slowing down the pace of the cut to ensure that i'm getting a good clean cut with the sharp edge of the bowl gouge but i can already sense that there's a there's lacking performance from the bowl gouge it needs to be sharpened you see the dust coming off of there not too many shavings we need the opposite we need lots of shavings and less dust it's time to sharpen so over to the sharpening station now if you've got any questions about sharpening be sure to check out my online tool sharpening e-course in that course i go over everything you're going to need to know to sharpen all of your tools for bowl turning but also for shaping tools so if you're interested in using a bowl gouge like my 55 degree bevel swept back bowl gouge i show you in that course exactly how to shape your existing bowl gouge to this profile and then how to sharpen it if you're liking this video do me a huge favor and smash that like button under the screen right now and while you're there check and make sure you're subscribing if you're not subscribing click that subscribe button thanks okay now with the bowl gouge nice and sharp we're going to go back to the lathe and start finalizing the shape of the exterior of this bowl look at those shavings much difference different performance after the bowl gouge is sharpened you know i'm asked often how do you turn really hard wood like walnut and oak and things like that and the answer is with a sharp bowl gouge those cracks are really being persistent here the grain of the wood is gorgeous but those cracks are a little bit of an issue here so we're going to keep shaping i'm going to take a few moments and determine where the tenon will be on this piece i'm gonna go ahead and mark the size of the tendon and then i'll shape it the tenon's super important to get right if you don't get it right you can have some miserable mistakes if you want to see some tenons gone wrong check out this video all right here i'm using my spindle detail gouge to cut the dovetail angle of the bottom of the tenon i'm also using it to clean out the area at the bottom corner of that tenon so that it'll seat nicely onto the four jaw chuck look how beautiful the shavings are coming off that's what you want to see from your bowl gouge the biggest secret with cutting hard wood is to have a sharp bowl gouge as i mentioned but it's also in paying attention so right now i can see what the bull gouge is doing and that's great but slowly that's going to degrade and it's going to become a little bit dull and the performance is going to diminish i need to pay attention to that occurring and i need to know to go sharpen again it only takes a few seconds to sharpen but if i allow the tool to go dull then i'm going to have issues so instead of doing that i've got to pay attention to when the tool starts acting a little a little poorly and then go back and sharpen and i will improve that performance again it's really that simple all right i'm going down a little bit deeper to see if i can get around these cracks sometimes the cracks only occur on the ends of the logs and they don't really go all the way through and the bowl is positioned pretty much in the center of the log so i'm kind of hoping but i'm doubting it i'm hoping that the cracks don't exist in the middle of this log we're gonna have to see and they're still there they're not as bad as they were but they're still there i'm going to take a few moments and and really shape that base and establish the bottom look for the bowl because this was cut at a 90 degree angle from the pith or center of the log this bowl has quarter-sawn wood running through it you can see the grain moving there now the reason i switched directions here i'm going against the grain but what i'm doing is i'm preventing knocking out all of the end grain fibers along the edge of this bowl just on the top edge i'm going to go against the grain very light and very slow so i don't rip out a bunch of fibers but i also don't want to go the opposite way which would push all those loose fibers off the top of the bowl we don't want that now i'm just making refining cuts getting down there and fixing the angle going into the base of the bowl i still have a seam there at the top where that top cut and the side cut didn't quite line up so i need to smooth that off next the way i'm going to do that is with the shear scrape the shear scrape is the best tool it's almost like erasing mistakes you just drop the tool at about a 45 degree angle and you're using the lower wing now i've got a video all on this as well so when you get a moment after this video go check out my series on the bowl gouge and check out the sheer scraping video because you're going to want to know how to do this you see how those fine those fibers are that are coming off they're cutting it it's cutting just a thin layer off the top it's almost like shaving this is where i can take off those little high spots i'm seeing a little high spot on the bottom of the bowl there and i wanted to simply remove that and the way to do that is with the shear scrape okay so these cracks need to be dealt with and i'm going to do this this really simple technique i actually press wood glue down into the crack wipe off the excess the best you can and then you take sandpaper and quickly and rapidly sand with the grain of the wood three things are happening the glue is getting down in the crack it's going to hold the crack together and fix that the sanding is creating dust that is sealing or camouflaging the glue and the friction from sanding is actually heating up and almost cauterizing the top of the glue on the top on top of the surface the glue inside will dry over time but on top it's dry right away so you don't have to sit and wait for the glue to dry first time somebody told me about this technique i thought i thought i i've thought of all the other times i've used wood glue in projects and you have to wait hours for it to dry and i'm thinking i want to finish turning this i don't want to wait for hours and when they showed me this technique i was i was stunned and what's neat about it it's done right and you sand with the with the grain the crack becomes very very well disguised and it's also secured so it shouldn't be expanding over time okay so with the exterior done i'm going to go ahead and pop out our drive center and put the four draw chuck in place yeah i have a plastic washer on my headstock because one of my chucks doesn't quite seat all the way down on the base of the headstock and it's important that you have a solid connection all the way down so i use a plastic washer on my headstock okay so now with my half inch 55 degree bevel sweatpack bowl gouge i'm just going to lightly remove material i have to remember that i have a relatively narrow connection at the base of this on the tenon but this is also walnut so it's a very strong wood that can handle tension to a certain degree what i'm going to do is i'm going to level this off and i'm going to get to the outer wall thickness i want to determine the outer wall thickness right away now some turners will do different things now this is one of the things i stress as well on my website if you haven't had a chance to check out my website go to turnitwoodbowl.com yeah that's the name turnwoodbull.com i have a ton of articles all about turning wood bowls and and just tons of information you're going to want to check it out one of the things that i stress in my articles and that is there are a number of different ways to get the results there's there's not really one best way to do it and many times we're taught a certain way and that's what we're comfortable with doing so as long as you're getting good results there's no no need to change it the point i was getting at is there is a variety of different ways of taking out the interior of the bowl you could use a forstner bit and you can drill out the center if you'd like you could start scooping out from the center and work out to the walls i prefer to work from the walls in because i've found that i have more stability less flexing of those walls plus it gives me much better control of slowly maintaining that wall thickness down into the bowl i found that when i clear out the center of the bowl first and then try to match it up that many times the curved passes i was making to clear out the middle don't necessarily line up or aren't exactly parallel with the exterior of the bowl so then i've gotta mess around and try to make it work at the last minute and then i've got areas of the bowl that are thin and thicker and i just i've discovered that this method works really well and what i'm doing is i'm basically making a trough or like a valley right next to the side wall and i leave the core in there now if you have green wood this really helps because it reduces the amount of flexing of those side walls as you work down they're going to flex once you're down at the bottom but as you're working them they will stay very stable so i work that center down a little bit and then i go back out to the outside and i clear away that valley area which exposes the next section of the sidewall and now very gently with the bowl gouge i just rub the bevel and let the cutting edge engage to line up with the previous cut so many shavings there you almost can't see the cut just a very light very light passes merging the new section in with the previous section now the trick with this is we don't go back up to the top of the rim because as we're removing the core of this center that top rim is less stable and more flexible and if you try to turn it you're going to hear a clanking sound that's because the walls are flexing a little bit up at the top but right where we are right now this next new section there's stability so we take advantage of that stability and make a nice clean even pass and just rub pick up the cut and match that wall thickness the other thing that i'm doing is i'm not bending over looking into the bowl as i'm making the cuts i'm looking down the bowl size i'm looking at the exterior of the bowl and i'm picturing where the bowl gouge is in the bowl and it sounds it sounds kind of funny because it sounds like that's not possible but you can you'll get a feel after doing several bowls of where that bowl gouge is and you can tell if you're matching the parallel of the exterior or that and that's all i'm doing i'm looking down on the outside of the bowl and making sure that i'm making a cut that is parallel with the exterior and when i do that then i have an evenly thick wall by the time i'm done and down to the bottom of the bowl now as hard as black walnut is i think that i've sharpened this bowl gouge maybe three times four times at the absolute most but i think it was three times for this whole turning i get asked that question pretty often but it's not a ton you'd be surprised the bull gods will stay sharp for quite a while even with very dense stock like this it's always good to sharpen your bowl gouge right before you make your last finishing cuts as well now what we're doing is we're just sneaking up on that thickness and the previous cut and it's right there i'm just rubbing the bevel letting the cutting edge come in i'm going to close the flute to the right you can see i have it in a 90 degree angle to the right and just let it finish the cut there lightly that's looking real good it's a little nub there in the middle that'll sand right off okay so i'm going to do the same process for the interior interior of the bowl with those cracks just like i did on the exterior now the cracks have been pretty much dealt with they should be stabilized and it shouldn't be an issue as far as them expanding over time the fact that the wall thickness is even as well once this this wood is completely dry which is it's very dry right now now that's kind of funny but that's one of the other i guess advantages of using an old cracked log like this is that that wood is pretty much dry already so you don't have to worry about too much movement so i'm going to once turn this and it should be this shape pretty close to this permanently once once it is 100 percent dry there's not going to be that much movement moving the curves when there's a lot of moisture change so if this were a completely green piece of wood and i turned it to this final shape it's going to dry fast and it's probably going to warp and change shape pretty dramatically as well but because this is already semi-dried from sitting around in its log form then i don't have to really worry about that so much i am sanding the raw natural edge here there is some darker material underneath the bark by sanding that it just evens it out cleans that up gives it a nice finished look all right so i'm going to go ahead and mount my jam chuck i have a jam chuck that i use on my other four jaw chucks i'll switch out the four jaw chucks and then i'll put the jam chuck in now jam chuck you can make out of a piece of scrap wood and yep i got a video for that too i can only put so many links for videos in here you're gonna have to go dig into the foundational videos in my collection on my channel but i have a video there all about jam chucks and it's a very very simple effective way of dealing with taking the bottoms of these off if you notice there i lined up the hole from the tail stock from when we started right back to its center from before so it's very simple to center this up and i use a piece of foam padding in there too so we're not scratching up the interior of the bowl okay so i'm just gonna make some light push cuts towards the headstock and remove this tenon i need to keep enough of a nub on there that i've got a good connection i'm going to square up the foot of the bowl and then i want the interior of the bowl to be concave or the interior of the foot of the bowl so i'm just going to go in slightly now this is my 55 degree bevel but it doesn't reach in there very well so i'm going to go in here with my spindle detail gouge this is going to give me the ability to reduce the size of the nub and then come back in here with a scoop to make that concave shape into the bottom of the foot i'm going to pull all those previous cuts together let me just keep narrowing that nub you need to pay attention and make sure that you're getting a good rotation i'm feeling a little bit of vibration there so i'm going to go ahead and sever this now basically apply inward pressure turn the lathe off give it a little twist and the fibers are cut and then you can sand the rest of that foot area and it's ready to go okay so i'm at the bottom of my jar of this is tried and true danish oil now i buy this in a large can uh gallon can and i transfer a small amount into a glass jar and the reason i do that this is polymerized linseed oil i think i'm saying that right it's polymerized which means that when it's exposed to oxygen it will start hardening or curing so if i keep opening the can over and over again there's a chance that it's going to oxidize and this kind of quality is going to diminish so i just put a little bit in the jar and use that look at that green this is gorgeous now i really wish the cracks weren't there but they were and we did our best to patch those i could have sanded a little bit more and got more of that glue off but look at the beautiful black walnut green lines absolutely gorgeous wood from a pretty much firewood worthy log ah this is the quarter sawn grain that's why the quarter-sauna is so gorgeous you get to see all of those grain lines it's like a graphic design absolutely gorgeous and look at the heart in the center the heartwood love this beautiful piece so is it trash or treasure that's the question i guess it's all based on your perspective if you happen to find this piece of wood laying in the ditch and you picked it up and you were able to salvage it and make a piece out of this i would call that a treasure if on the other hand you had this log in your possession when it was fresh and green and you kind of ignored it and it got out of hand and started cracking like that not so much of a treasure but you can still salvage plenty of turnings out of a small piece of wood that wasn't necessarily cut right and was ignored and left to dry we've got this beautiful little bowl and we still have several other blanks that we can do other projects with so if nothing else i hope this video has helped you see that even a small cracking piece of wood has the potential to make some beautiful turnings and don't let it go to waste and don't turn it into firewood please and who knows maybe you can turn something beautiful out of the piece of log that was left abandoned and neglected and perhaps there's a treasure hiding inside all right guys i hope you liked this video and if you did please click that like button below the screen i greatly appreciate that and subscribe if you're not already subscribing and click that bell because you're going to be notified when my next video comes out which i've got plenty of them in the pike and you're not going to want to miss any of them all right guys as always until next time happy turning [Music] you

Channel: Turn A Wood Bowl

Views: 30,035

Keywords: Woodturning Firewood to Treasure, firewood to bowl, Firewood bowl, turning firewood, natural edge bowl, woodturning, Kent Weakley, Turn a wood bowl, wood bowl, wood turning, bowl turning, woodturning video, woodturning ideas, woodturning bowl, woodturning videos, black walnut, walnut, salvage, cracking, cracks, how to, hand made, wood lathe

Id: zBRuxfnhmf4

Length: 41min 0sec (2460 seconds)

Published: Sat Dec 18 2021