This is a lump of my rotten, spalted holly, which I mounted on the lathe just as a bit of practice at hollowing and working with less-than-perfect timber. Gradually, though, I began to realise that I might just be able to make something out of it. I'd turned the outside into a vase shape and realised that I wasn't going to be able to go much further because there is a crack, going from the rim, right down to the foot and then back up to the rim on the other side. Undaunted, I fed the crack with ca glue a few times, then wrapped a big hose-clip around the vase and bound it with gaffer tape, then I mounted it into my Patriot chuck and hollowed out the inside.
That's when the fun really started! There was a great big lump of completely rotten wood right in the centre of where I was about to turn the foot. This I know because most of it came out in one piece, snagged into the cutter on my hollowing tool! Then the crack started to open up. So I cautiously scraped out as much of the interior as I could, but had to give up after a while and resort to scraping. I can get my hand inside (just) but it's too dangerous to run the lathe with my hand in there, so I resorted to lots of gentle hand-sanding and I made up a soft ball on the end of a metal rod, with various grades of Abranet on it. The inside is nowhere near as good as I'd like it to be, but I can't do any more turning in there and even sanding is a bit precarious.
I managed to reverse mount it on a jam chuck, which I made as a loose fit and then tightened a hose-clip around the vase again to hold it in place, but it was impossible to put a revolving centre against the base because there was now just a hole where the centre should be. To clean the base up I just put a small block of wood, the same diameter as the foot, onto the revolving centre and applied gentle pressure to it.
WHAT TO DO NEXT?
I'm new to this style of turning, and what I'm thinking of is applying several tight turns of silver wire to the vase, about 25mm down from the top, and perhaps securing it by putting a 90degree bend into each end of the wire and setting them each into a hole drilled half-way through the thickness of the wall. I'm not planning to fill all the cracks (despite having just researched the various methods and bought brass powder etc) because I want the vase to remain delicately intact.
I'm open to suggestions from you guys who've dabbled with this sort of thing before and just hoping that my ideas aren't completely off-the-wall.
The vase is 200mm (8") tall and 100mm (4") diameter at the widest point, with the wall thickness down to 5mm at the top, more like 7mm at the base, and what's left of the foot is solid.
Come on guys....be gentle, and helpful (as ever)...Les