Over the past few months, I’ve been working on this plate. It’s made from sweet gum that RWE sent me. I started with a piece that was roughly 12 inches square (300mm) by 3 inches thick (75mm). I finished with a plate that is just under 12 inches in diameter, and about an inch thick, and which isn’t quite flat. Sweet gum moves a lot as it dries, and I didn’t account for this movement in my initial turning.
The thickness of the plate itself is under a quarter inch (6mm), probably closer to ⅛ inch at the thinnest spot, but I don’t have a caliper that can measure it accurately.
But I think the plate is finally done. The finish is tung oil and shellac, applied by french polishing, after a number of initial coats of oil. It’s food safe, but I don’t know that anyone will ever eat from this plate.
In my numbering of turned bowls, this is number 48.
Note that the plate is big enough that I had to turn the head of my lathe so the plate was parallel to the ways of the lathe, rather than the usual perpendicular alignment.
Splint, the HF lathe has ways on both sides of the head, and I did a reacharound. Here’s pretty much the same setup on the juniper bowl I sent off on a previous swap.
Thanks, all! It was a ton of work, and I backtracked more than once as the sweet gum kept moving on me. I think I scraped / sanded finish off at least twice as I thinned and flattened the plate again. Then once I got the inside done and turned off the mortise in the base holding it in the Cole jaws, I of course wanted to do one more thing on the inside, but now had no good way to hold it.
Learned a lot on this one, but eventually I was pretty happy with it.
Very nice Dave, looks beautiful and can be a centerpiece for any table. Seeing this has renewed my interest in lathe work, something I've not done in several years. Thanks for the old proverbial boot in the rear.
