Roughed out my first big bowl today. 12" x 5" Wow - that was an experience!
I use a ShopSmith as a lathe. It has a 16" swing, but is light weight for a lathe. It also has a wonderful mechanical variable speed, but unfortunately only goes down to 700 RPM.
I knew it would be fast for a 12" bowl, but dang! Those chips hurt while using the roughing gouge! Once I got to where I was using the bowl gouge they were fine, but it was a violent experience in the beginning.
There was also a fair bit of shaking until I had the blank balanced. I am glad I went the conservative route and purchased a pre-rounded blank.
All in all, it went pretty good. I have the bowl roughed out to about 1" thick for drying.
I use a ShopSmith as a lathe. It has a 16" swing, but is light weight for a lathe. It also has a wonderful mechanical variable speed, but unfortunately only goes down to 700 RPM.
I knew it would be fast for a 12" bowl, but dang! Those chips hurt while using the roughing gouge! Once I got to where I was using the bowl gouge they were fine, but it was a violent experience in the beginning.
There was also a fair bit of shaking until I had the blank balanced. I am glad I went the conservative route and purchased a pre-rounded blank.
All in all, it went pretty good. I have the bowl roughed out to about 1" thick for drying.
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