Richard Raffan turns a broken lid in to a bowl. 

Not ridiculous at all. I've set this as a challenge in a crossgrain box workshop. Many times over decades I've tried to create a lid that functions as a bowl but have yet to be satisfied with the result. If the lid works as bowl chances are the bowl looks like a bowl missing a lid. A bead or rim to locate the lid tends to look odd when on its own and there for no obvious purpose. Time to give that another go!

It does look as though the chuck unscrewed slightly, so I was lucky to get away with that. Now I'm surprised you didn't see me catching the bowl and chuck. Switching back to forward, normally there would have been a clunk as it locked on - followed by a loud oh-no! groan from me, knowing it might take minutes to get the chuck off the spindle. To avoid that, when mounting chucks and faceplates on the spindle I always flick them through the last half turn to lock them on and pevent them unwinding as I switch on reverse. And I often give the chuck a push as I switch on reverse. If the chuck isn't on tight reverse will usually have it off instantly.

I enjoyed that, Richard. Happy new year 🌞

Richard,even! 🌞

I never use a dovetail mortice if I can possibly avoid it for several reasons. 1. It limits the depth to which you can hollow, making a bowl heavier in the base than needed both physically and visually. 2. You're gripping on a smaller diameter than jaws enclosing around a foot or tenon, so there's less support for the blank. 3. Unless you have more than 20mm of wood surrounding the jaws, the mortise needs to be close to the diameter of the chuck. With jaws opened wide in a mortise you need to ensure jaws aren't pressing against the endgrain which can slip like a geological fault line. It's just anothe irritation I can do without. 4. Finally, with many bowls I want a foot. The 2-in Spigot Chuck introduced by Craft Supplies UK in 1978 enable me to take small decorative footed bowls straight out of the chuck.. I was delighted when the modern 4-jaw chucks came along a decade later, enabling me to do the same with larger footed bowls. I was selling bowls for a living, so being able to take finished bowls from a chuck saved me hundreds of hours and increased my production by several bowls a day. If I want to remove a foot that takes only a couple of minutes, but mostly I don't.

I have two reasons for using a spindle gouge on facework, maybe three. First, a spindle gouge is less expensive than a bowl gouge, the strength of which is wasted when cutting close to the rest. Second, when roughing bowls using green wood, shavings used to jam in a deep flute so tight I had to spend time levering them out with a dental tool. Third, deep-fluted gouges, at least mine, can't get into corners like a spindle gouge. OH! And there's a fourth reason: to show the superstitious and ignorant that you can use spindle gouges on facework including bowls ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-sYHBrUxpo7M.html.

@@RichardRaffanwoodturning All good reasons. I hadn't considered the cost, but that's a good one.

Sorry to interup the comments but i did convert to use more spindle gouge on face work and I gotta say I save a lot of deep flute gouge metal.... I use bowl gouge for hollowing and pushcut/sheer cut on final pass on outside of a bowl..... I believe Bob Stocksdale was using spindle gouges as well.... What I'm trying to say that they work wonderfull and cost savings are great in my case..... Sorry once again for interupt conversation😀

@@tomislavtomasicwoodturning Stocksdale did use a spindle gouge made for him by Jerry Glaser who gave me one - a Stocksdale gouge - in 1981. I roughed all my bowl profiles with it for about seven years.

@@RichardRaffanwoodturning was it like henry taylor or hamlet or ?

I think it's worth keeping a few pieces to mark your progress. I still have my first bowl and first plate in daily use. It's also worth keeping a few pieces to remind you not to go there again. For many years I turned thick-walled bowls because that's what the Australian market demanded at that time. Some came back to me years later and I re-turned them to thinner bowls, treating them as roughed out bowls. If you've got a clunky bowl there's no reason why you can't get it back on the lathe and see what you can do with it. And no big deal if you end up with nothing other than an enjoyable journey of exploration.

All of the above. Quite a few have sold and are now in America, Croatia, Britain, Canada. I"m a professional turner so it's all for sale and those interested email me through my website.

Manchurian Pear (Pyrus ussuriensis) Hruška mandžuská (Pyrus ussuriensis)

I've had a large Veritas caliper for many years which I purchased in Calgary from Lee Valley Tools. I was given the smaller you see in the video by an American, so they were probably purchased in America. www.veritastools.com/Products/Page.aspx?p=69

@@RichardRaffanwoodturning Thanks very much for the info. I’ll look into finding a vendor. Cheers, Tom

These are Veritas Thickness Calipers. www.veritastools.com/products/Page.aspx?p=69