Cracked Ash
Posted By Vaughn on July 23, 2010
This is another piece of ash firewood that I picked up at a local lot that was going out of business. Unlike many other woods, ash is usually a fairly stable wood that doesn’t crack when drying. However, this one did, and usually that’s a good excuse to toss it into the firewood pile, but I decided to see if it would survive the ride on the lathe anyway. Click on any of the pictures below to see a larger version.
At the beginning, it was a fairly innocuous-looking piece of wood…
Next step is to drill a 1″ hole to inset the spur center (the pointy thing, for you non-woodturners) into the wood…
The spur center is driven into place…
And the chunk of wood is mounted on the lathe…
This, sports fans, is what shrinkage cracks can look like…
Starting to get things rounded up…
Now it actually looks like something. I dunno what, but it’s something. The knob on the end is called a tenon, and later that’s what I’ll attach to the lathe while I hollow out the inside…
As I started shaping the top, I discovered that the bark inclusion was hiding another crack…
Let’s get out the crack-measuring tool…
Yeppers, it’s deep…
So is this one and several of the others…
What the heck, let’s see if it’ll survive the hollowing process…
Looks like it worked after all. It won’t hold water very well, though…
The crack at the bark inclusion turned out to be a whopper…
But I think it looks kind of nice…
And it’s all very well ventilated…
This piece ended up being 12 1/2″ wide and 8 1/2″ tall — one of the biggest hollow forms I’ve made. It has a soft, hand-rubbed tung oil finish that seems to compliment the natural flaws in the wood. Hollowing a piece of dry ash this size is a lot of work, and the cracks made it that much more adventurous.
Feel free to comment, critique, or question!
Comments
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.