Michael-I'm going to admit something even worse that really made me angry at my own stupidity. I slide the headstock back and forth a lot on my PowerMatic, basically on every bowl. Turns out on the last headstock return trip after a vigorous wipe-down/wax of the bed, I somehow forgot to lock the cam of the 163# cast-iron headstock with the lever under it (which I need to make a do-not-pass-go part of that ritual on every shutdown!). So a couple of days ago I had on a beautiful semi-dry piece of weeping cherry. Roughly 9x5"ish, just a little past "stop-sign round" off the chain saw), and I'm just guessing 7 or 8 pounds of pretty hard wood in a live-edge mounted between centers: a 1-inch standard 4-spur drive which I pound in hard into green wood after drilling just below the bark. The live-center is the Robust small cup with just a little point protruding. I always crank down on the quill as I slowly bring a blank up to safe speeds. On my wooden floor, I HAVE to be attuned to every little wobble or vibration until I get pretty close to round. I can get up to some usable speed once I'm round after I dial in the sweet-spot The plan was to make my usual green tenon for a bowl this size for 75 or 100mm jaws on my Record Power SC4 chuck, which I am getting much better results with now that I am sizing my tenons and recesses as close to a perfect closed circle as I can. I know how much more serious my holding points have to be with the bigger, greener turns I can do now. If anything, I may be guilty of over-kill on my various chuck jaw sizes; they just feel more secure.
Anyway, I wondered why I kept having to crank down on the quill so much. At some point, all seemed okay, until at maybe 550rpm, the blank flew off, bounced off the cast-iron bed and bounced over to bonk the edge of my very heavy-duty grinding bench. then falling to the floor with no harm done other than my ego. "How could you be so stupid?" has rung in my head ever since. I looked over to see that unlocked, massive headstock tower a good 3 inches off the lathe bed on the end due to the unlocked cam-well, shit! Thank god the stop bolt was in on that side-I'm never taking that off! I was avoiding the line of fire and had my standard plastic helmet on (which I admit I slacked off on before, and I don't have much faith in it anyway-looking at other more expensive options). So after some cussing I lined it back up and locked it to try again-back on the horse, eh? (and hey, it's weeping cherry!).
Anyway, two days in a row I had to throw some gorgeous cherry on the burn pile due to unexpected deep cracks, and not just voids, but huge caverns. I erred on the safe side with two not really structurally sound blanks anyway. But cherry is my kryptonite, y'all. Good news is I got some pretty nice ambrosia maple green turns out of a huge log my tree-man neighbor gave me, and am finishing up some chinese elm live edge pieces from him too. He brings me more interesting green wood than I can possibly keep up with (which I know as a turner is a great problem to have).
So my penance today is to kind of go crazy on cleaning up, reorganizing and lots of pm's while I think about my sin. After weeks of turning, my shop was approaching nightmare status. There were dusty layers on my work bench to work down just to the surface. A clean shop is a safe shop if you're always mindful of your procedures and turning habits. Good to relearn that occasionally too.
"Thank you for listening to my TED Talk." That is the last line of the greatest, funniest AP English essay I have graded this year. I guess my point is it helps to have a sense of humor when you're having an interesting day in the shop.