Deborah the architect asked me to cut the wood from her building plot so they could use it in the house. The big pear (or is it an apple) was riddled with nails and Martin the saw wouldn’t touch it. It was a lovely large chunk so I cut two feet off the base and cut the corners off it and got it to the lathe on the sack truck. It was still way too heavy to lift, so I rolled it up the truck to the sawhorses, planed a flat where I wanted it and screwed on the faceplate. I used a winch to raise it to the Lathe. Still too heavy to spin, so I removed wood with an Arbotech until I could get the tool rest close to it. I have a variable speed lathe, but the computer couldn’t handle the weight, mainly on the overrun. It took several hours of slow work with the Arbotech and then with the gouge before I could say I was turning it. I remove what I didn’t want from the outside and then hollowed it out. An unjustifiable four days spent on that, but it has a beauty and presence, but there is no work around and I was bored with fitting the Solar collector in the cold. It looks even better now three weeks later as the moisture content has dropped and the bowl is even more oval and the surface sinks into the grain.
