Is this blank going to come apart?

[Greg Wold]

I'm looking to make a first bowl, attempting something small as, maybe, a shaving bowl. I thought I might start with this little piece of air-dried wood (first image, IMG_4481). It's about 5" long, 4-1/4" wide and 2-1/4" deep. What bothers me are the cracks I can see around the outer edge, many of which run end-to-end. See the two colored arrows in the other three images--they show two of the cracks, with the red indicating one and the green the other.

Should I burn this blank, because those cracks mean it'll come apart when I get the walls thin enough?

 

[Monty Ivy]

Impossible to say with any certainty. I would turn it after:
Run thin CA glue in all of the cracks and let it dry overnight. Be generous.
Take it really easy with light cuts. Looks like some of the cracks might get turned away.

What kind of wood is it?

 

[Brian Gustin]

A piece that small, I wouldn't have a big fear of turning it, BUT!

- If this will be your first ever bowl, I wouldn't recommend trying it at this point - You'll want some little bit of experience and practice with a nice solid stable piece , otherwise, you're likely to experience "overload" - What with trying to focus on learning how to turn a bowl, your cuts, your gouges, your technique, it would all be relatively new to you, and then adding on top of that the need to be fully aware of what is happening with the wood itself (I.E. listening/feeling for things going wrong - vibration, chatter, and more - things that you sometimes can only learn from practice on a good solid piece and knowing what THAT sounds or feels like, then when you're working with unstable wood, you got a sense of "something's wrong - for sure" as opposed to "Is something I should maybe worry about?" )

IMHO, it looks like a decent piece of spalted maple with some possible defects that likely may be turned away with care, so you might stick it on a shelf for a while, and find some more solid and stable pieces to work with (Perhaps a chunk of a 4x4 or 6x6 post, if nothing else readily available) until you are more comfortable with bowl turning in general...

 

[Greg Wold]

Impossible to say with any certainty. I would turn it after:
Run thin CA glue in all of the cracks and let it dry overnight. Be generous.
Take it really easy with light cuts. Looks like some of the cracks might get turned away.

What kind of wood is it?

Thanks, Monty. I'm not really sure what wood this is--the guy I got it from thought it was maple, and I don't know enough to confirm or decide it's something else.

A piece that small, I wouldn't have a big fear of turning it, BUT!

- If this will be your first ever bowl, I wouldn't recommend trying it at this point - You'll want some little bit of experience and practice with a nice solid stable piece , otherwise, you're likely to experience "overload" - What with trying to focus on learning how to turn a bowl, your cuts, your gouges, your technique, it would all be relatively new to you, and then adding on top of that the need to be fully aware of what is happening with the wood itself (I.E. listening/feeling for things going wrong - vibration, chatter, and more - things that you sometimes can only learn from practice on a good solid piece and knowing what THAT sounds or feels like, then when you're working with unstable wood, you got a sense of "something's wrong - for sure" as opposed to "Is something I should maybe worry about?" )

IMHO, it looks like a decent piece of spalted maple with some possible defects that likely may be turned away with care, so you might stick it on a shelf for a while, and find some more solid and stable pieces to work with (Perhaps a chunk of a 4x4 or 6x6 post, if nothing else readily available) until you are more comfortable with bowl turning in general...

I believe you, Brian. I've got some cherry and oak that's larger (less stress that I'll mess up my tool banging them on each other) and more stable. I'll work with some of that wood first.

 

[robo hippy]

I am one of those who will turn away all of the cracks. So, for that piece, I would get a shallow bowl out of it, or maybe a deep platter. The thing with cracks is I figure they will fail eventually, no matter what you do with them, and I don't want cracks in my every day use bowls. People who buy them always find the cracks, and if there is an uncracked one on the shelf, they always buy that one.

robo hippy

 

[hockenbery]

I'm looking to make a first bowl, attempting something small as, maybe, a shaving bowl.

there is no guarantee on how deep the cracks go or how structurally sound the wood is.
it could be punky and fall apart.

the radial cracks likely go deeper than the dark lines you see.
you Can sketch your shapes on the end of the log to visualize what you can turn from it.

bowl centered on the grain it’s going to have cracks that go through the wall but if the wood is sound the bowl will hold together. Just won’t hold soup.

natural edge bowl this Shows the cross section of the lower rim the end of the log is the high rim with a crack in the middle. You could cut off the top and maybe have a crack free cut rim bowl

Go for a shallow bowl with the grain off center to me grain this off center is unappealing 90% of the time. But sometimes it is gorgeous.

this is my solution for high quality wood with cracks I would bandsaw three spindle blanks and dry them. the larger can be spheres, boxes, tops, pepper mill…..
if it is a harder wood the larger could be a gavel head and the small one the gavel handle

 

[Greg Wold]

@hockenbery that set off a lightbulb, started me thinking about what the grain would look like in each of those orientations. Thanks!