I was a bit disappointed (if unsurprised) to fail in finding any blanks large enough for this vessel even though I checked something like a dozen wood suppliers. The closest I found was a 12"-diameter log of 16 foot length, but that pretty much defines the term "overkill". So instead I just did some thinking about how I wanted to build it up from smaller pieces. I didn't want to do a large segmented piece, so I opted for horizontal layers for the main body since I was pleased with other vessels I had made with that technique.

The original had a pattern on the upper section and I opted to keep with that theme, although the pattern I used was completely different. I went with a construction of small segments for the top part since I hadn't tried that before and it should give a better grain arrangement for carving.

I was able to find some 1-inch maple planks wide enough for the largest part of the vessel - a bit over 8 inches. I bought this 8-foot piece plus another three-foot piece so I'd have some extra.

Maple is actually pretty inexpensive as far as hardwood goes, which was a nice bonus. Overall I bought 8.3 board-feet and used most of it.

For ease of handling I cut the wood into three smaller pieces, sized so I could get either 3 or four 8" circles out of them.

The layers were to be 0.4" thick so each plank was cut into two so that were both a bit under 1/2". This was pretty slow going since the saw is cutting through about 9" of wood.

Those three original 1" pieces were now six 1/2" pieces, plus I included a thicker one to be used for the bottom of the vessel.

I think last time I thickness-planed a bunch of boards I said that I was just going to use longer pieces of wood and throw away the sniped ends. Turns I didn't buy quite enough wood for that so I ended up adding the little anti-snipe legs again. These were just scraps of about the right thickness that were glued to each corner.

Then the wood was run through the planer a bunch of times. This smoothed out both sides and got them down to the proper thickness.

Once that was done, circles of a bit more than 8" diameter were marked on all the boards with a compass and the 20 circles cut out with the bandsaw.

And in fairly short order I had a pile of roughly cut out discs.

The discs needed a bit of post-processing including removing burrs from the cutting operation. This would ensure they stacked cleanly on one another.

Hollowing a solid vessel is a very slow process so I turned the discs into rings to reduce the amount of hollowing needed. The jigsaw and a clamp made fairly quick work of that task.

The discs were now donuts and this is the pile of them with the cut-out holes in the background. Hmmm...may have to think about some suitable vessel to make from those holes...

After establishing the orientation of each donut, they all got numbered so that aligning the numbers would result in the desired grain pattern. I just used a 90-degree rotation of grain on alternating layers.

I glued up only half the layers at a time so the stack was more manageable. Here the bottom layers are being clamped while glue gooshes out.

The thick yellow board* at the top and the melamine at the bottom are to distribute the clamping pressure evenly.

*A cutoff from a Microlam support beam left over from some house renovations 15 years ago. Never know when you might need these things...

Then with top and bottom halves done, the two sections were glued together along with a large metal faceplate (with some plywood screwed to it) for turning.

The bottom part of the vessel went on the lathe mostly because I wanted to even up the front face. This would ensure that the top of the stack was exactly parallel to the base and also flat so that it would nicely mate with the top section.

I also rounded the outside a bit although that didn't really help anything at this stage.

So with the bottom section of the turning blank well in hand, I turned my attention to the top section;

There are to be two thin contrasting layers sandwiching the top section and my plan was to use roasted curly maple for these.

Here I'm resawing a plank to get a couple of pieces of appropriate thickness.

That plank width was smaller than the vessel diameter, so I edge-laminated the two pieces to get enough width. Here masking tape provides the clamping force for gluing while some weight keeps the pieces flat to the table.

The sharp of eye may notice that the weight is actually the big faceplate last seen mounted to the lathe in a previous photo. I must confess that this illustrated sequence of steps is more methodological than strictly chronological.

After the glue had dried, I was left with a very nice board with lots of figure of which we will unfortunately see only the edge in the finished vessel. Ah well, it should at least be a nice edge.

Here, it's been marked with a couple 8" circles which will first be cut out and then have the centers removed like the other pieces.

So then it was on to the other part of the top; the segmented bit.

I started by cutting a couple pieces to appropriate dimensions.

There were to be 12 segments forming the top, so they needed a 15-degree angle on each end.

Here the radial arm saw has been set for 15° and a stop added for the correct length. For each piece, I made a cut for the first end, then flipped the board over, moved it to the stop and made the second cut.

This is the pile of a dozen segments that will form the layer.

In this picture, I'm applying glue to a six of segments that have been masking-taped together. These will be bent into a half-circle shape to dry.

To make a segmented ring, the angle between the pieces must be pretty much exact which usually requires making a bunch of test rings and tweaking the cutting angle until the desired exactness is achieved.

I was too lazy to do that, so I just used my first-cut pieces. Since they weren't going to form a perfect ring, I instead made these two half-rings. After they dried, I used the belt sander to make sure the ends were flat so they would mate with each other.

Here the two halves are glued together and held with a band clamp until they dry.

So now the full vessel can be put together; the previously made bottom and the segmented section flanked by the two darker layers.

In this setup there are also a few extra pieces at the top to evenly distribute the clamping pressure.

All the effort up to here has been to make the blank, and now it's ready to turn.

The faceplate end was once again mounted to the lathe, and I attached a wood disc using temporary glue to the open end so it could be supported by the live center.

I started by rounding off the segmented portion at the top.

So with everything roughly rounded off, I was ready to start on the shaping.

The first step was to put the proper profile on the upper portion.

Then I used my standard technique of shaping vessels to a plan;

This is step 1 where I cut some ways into the vessel with a parting tool, making sure to avoid going too deep.

Step 2 is to measure the diameter. I have some calipers that are direct-reading, but this vessel is too big for them so instead I used my shop-made wood calipers to gauge the diameter.

Finally the caliper opening is checked against a 1:1 plan so I know how much further to cut in. Then it's back to step 1 until I'm very close to the desired diameter at that position on the vessel.

That above sequence is repeated at several places along the vessel and then excess wood between the measured points is removed and the profile smoothed.

In this shot the shaping of the outside is done.

The only thing left to do on the outside was to sand the bottom portion.

Unfortunately I hadn't been able to get a clean cut on the end grain of the maple. Sometimes sharp enough tools or shear scraping will do the trick, but not in this case, and I was left with small amounts of tearout that had to be sanded out.

With a fair amount of effort I managed to get the outside looking decent, working from 80 grit down to 320.

The plan was to have a design carved into the top portion of the vessel. I chose a sort of simple knot figure that would repeat 8 times around the circumference.

I made a full-sized pattern of the...um...pattern which is shown here. It was designed to wrap around the sloped top of the vessel but I didn't actually end up using it.

Instead I cut out a thin cardboard version of one segment that would let me trace the shape multiple times around the vessel.

Like that.

This shows the pencilled-on pattern, ready to go.

The general process for carving was to first outline the pattern with a small gouge to establish the edges of the wide lines forming the knots.

And then using a slightly larger gouge the "ground" area between the lines was cut away to produce a textured surface.

The yellow cuff is a professional woodcarver wrist guard to let me rest my wrist on the top edge of the vessel for extended periods. Any resemblence to an old soccer sock of Sue's is purely coincidental.

For a bit more relief, the pattern was again outlined with the narrow gouge, and then the edges were rounded off using small straight chisels.

Lastly the edges of the pattern were sanded to remove the tool marks and round the corners.

I didn't keep track but I'm guessing that the carving took 16 to 18 hours.

When the carving was complete, I did what I thought was some final* sanding on the main portion of the vessel.



*That's a little bit of that sophisticated literaturey foreshadowing for ya.

So with the outside done, it was on to the inside;





Obviously the hollowing is going to be way easier than if I hadn't cut out the centers of the layers. Aside from the hardened glue drips, there's maybe a half inch of wood to be removed.

I've got the steady-rest in place which supports the open end of the wood, but more importantly reduces vibration to give a smoother surface during wood removal.

I used my normal hollowing rig and started working in from the opening. At this point the top section is mostly rounded off, but obviously needs a bunch of smoothing.

This photo shows the general setup where I direct the hollowing jig into the vessel and keep an eye on the laser spot to tell how close the bit is to the wall.

Then before too long the inside was shaped and smoothed to give a reasonable wall thickness of around 1/4".

When I was arranging the layers to have the grain in alternate 90° orientations, I made sure that the mating pieces on the two halves of the stack were in the correct orientation. And they weren't. Grrr.... This error manifests in the two layers that are the same darker* shade near the middle of the vessel.

I suspect this isn't really even obvious until you notice it. But I noticed it, and it kind of looks like an amateur mistake. OK, technically I am an amateur** but why advertise it? Nothing for it but to fix the screwup.


*The color of each layer is actually due to the grain orientation. If the vessel is turned then the dark layers become light and vise-versa. This actually produces a wierd strobing effect when the vessel is spinning, with each layer switching between dark and light several times a second.

**Unless you want to talk nonlinear distortion causing sideband regeneration on high crest-factor RF signals? Didn't think so.




My optimistic plan was to use a thin tool to cut the vessel in half between two layers, rotate the top relative to the bottom and stick 'em back together.

Here a thin scraper blade has been modified to work as a parting tool and I'm about to make the cut.

Yah, so that didn't work very well. So then I used my next-thinnest parting tool and that didn't work well either. I finally fell back to "Plan B", which was to remove a whole layer. That's pretty much where we are at this photo.

With the lathe off, I cut the pieces apart manually with a saw to prevent any possibility of having the top piece go flying across the room.

Then the edges of both halves were cleaned up on the lathe, resulting in the pieces shown here.

I had originally made a couple spare layers, so was able to use one of them to replace the layer I removed. I first glued the replacement to the bottom, did some turning so it was a bit cleaner, then glued on the top as shown here.

And I was, needless to say, careful to correctly align the grain.

Little bit more turning, little bit more sanding and it's good to go.

The last bit was to finish off the bottom and for that it needed to come off the lathe.





Here it is sitting on a little quickie jig that holds it level while the bandsaw cuts off the glued-on plywood mounting piece.

The top was held in the big aluminum "jumbo jaws", and the tailstock was moved in to provide support for the bottom

Here using a bowl gouge, I'm removing excess wood to get the right height for the circular "foot".

That technique leaves a bit of wood at the center that needs to be cut off separately so here I'm grinding it away with a Dremel.

After that the bottom will be sanded flat with a combination of Dremel and hand-sanding.

A side view of the completed vessel.

As usual, it was finished with Fast-Drying Polyurethane. I used three coats, the first of which has just been applied here.

This final shot compares the color of the bottom laminations when the vessel is turned 90 degrees; the light layers turn dark and vise-versa.

A similar effect can be seen in the segmented section at the top; segments will be brighter or darker depending on the angle to the light.