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Any suggestions for walnut crotch pieces?

Norm Marentette

Norm Marentette

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Any suggestions how you would tackle these 2 pieces of walnut? Not sure if I should try NE bowl, regular bowl or keep shape and cut a bowl inside shape. About 17 inch in length and 6 inches or so thick.
 

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Norm Marentette said:
Any suggestions how you would tackle these 2 pieces of walnut? Not sure if I should try NE bowl, regular bowl or keep shape and cut a bowl inside shape. About 17 inch in length and 6 inches or so thick.
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It looks like the two pieces were cut apart after the piece had been flattened on one side. If only one cut had been made you would have had 2 great natural edge bowl blanks, but I have no idea what you could do with it now.
 
Norm Marentette said:
if I should try NE bowl,
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You have made one more cut than I would have see the thread below on NE bowls from a crotch.

If i wanted to do bowls from the two blanks, i would do NE bowls. With the unbalanced grain and curvature of the bark they should be interesting.


Naural edge bowl from a crotch

Turning a crotch is fun and produces a heart shaped bowl with a highly figured bottom. I put a video from a demo I did in may on YouTube. These are nice bowls for turners who have done 4-5 natural edge bowls without getting a catch. While best suited for intermediate and advanced beginners...
www.aawforum.org www.aawforum.org
 
Just to be clear, image 1 on the left is the crotch which is mirrored. Was cut only once thru the pith to make both pieces. Sorry for the misunderstanding. I think 2 NE bowls would be the choice? Would you normally not cut thru pith and keep the crotch as one piece?
 
Norm Marentette said:
Would you normally not cut thru pith and keep the crotch as one piece?
Click to expand...

A crotch has 3 piths connected in a “Y” shape. I try to cut through the 3 with one rip cut.


See the Slides I use in crotch bowl demo for diagrams and photos of cutting.


Naural edge bowl from a crotch

Turning a crotch is fun and produces a heart shaped bowl with a highly figured bottom. I put a video from a demo I did in may on YouTube. These are nice bowls for turners who have done 4-5 natural edge bowls without getting a catch. While best suited for intermediate and advanced beginners...
www.aawforum.org www.aawforum.org
 
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Whatever your design may be, I think it would be a nice outcome to make a mirrored-image matched set of objects.

Have fun with it.
Steve.
 
Center the flame and start cutting. Go for a NE but if it doesn't turn out, cut it down to a regular bowl. I would cut one side down to a round 6" blank. That's your width so you'll likely end up down to 6" anyway by the time you are done if you start with the full blank. The beauty of a crotch bowl is in the flame. Focus on that.
 
the flame crotch grain lies in between the crotch normally down to where the pith divides in the center and extended approximately half way between the pith of both sides of the Y. depending on how you cut and mount a blank, you can end up turning away all that wonderful grain. The idea is to cut the crotch to maximize the crotch curl/flame to be exposed in the bowl. No one looks at the underside of a bowl for fancy grain. so that is not the best place. Some I know would want the crotch swirl to be evident in the sides of the bowl so it would appear on opposite sides then you need to have that grain running vertically across the center of your blank. . You can approximate the grain features in the bowl by how you cut the blank. Sometimes, a turner has a larger shallower idea and wants the fancy grain to cover the inside bottom of the bowl that involves cutting to one side or the other of that fancy grain so that the best is located on the inside bottom of the bowl.

If you just hack down through that fancy grain, it gets turned away for the most part.
 
Thanks Perry and everyone who responded, great info, I am new to NE bowl turning. Should have maximized walnut grain in bowl blanks when cutting crotch. Lots of sapwood in this piece. I was just thinking of cutting thru the 3 piths first when roughing blank with chainsaw.
 
Norm Marentette said:
Thanks Perry and everyone who responded, great info, I am new to NE bowl turning. Should have maximized walnut grain in bowl blanks when cutting crotch. Lots of sapwood in this piece. I was just thinking of cutting thru the 3 piths first when roughing blank with chainsaw.
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Some wisdom and knowledge comes from the unfortunate cost of experience. I had a gorgeous large black walnut crotch from a tree that grew next to the old farm house on our farm. and realized after i cut blanks, that I screwed it up terribly.
 
At this point, maybe a couple pepper mills. Sort of a shame it was cut. It might've also made a very cool hollow form.
 
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