Gary Beasley

Chestnut heres a video from a premier Irish woodturner I met at a woodturning symposium. He produces his own videos and is darn good at it and runs a woodturning school in Ireland on top of his production turning. I think you’ll like it.

They dont charge extra for the rust do they?

Good first try. Work on doing more continuous curve to the sides, the straight sides are more prone to cracking though your mileage may vary. You might want to visit the AAW forums to see the discussions on this subject.

Yep. Came with some kind of special oil different from the usual pump oil, so you have to be up on the maintenance requirements if you find one.

Have you checked the lower guide rollers? Sounds like one trying to seize.

You might want to look for a lab grade pump used if possible like the one here I sold recently. It’s only 1.5cfm but will draw darn near 30” of vacuum and is duty rated to run nonstop for 14 days.

Most of the platemakers and my pump draw about 22 to 25 inches. The oil type pumps are a lot better for such high vacuum.

Usually what happens is the vane wears to the point of leaking air and will lose max vacuum. Sometimes it gets dust built up in the chamber and needs to be flushed with solvent. The only time Ive had one totally fail suddenly the starter circuit in the motor burned out.

Not quite as much as a high quality oil pump, but close. Definitely good enough for veneer work. They were used for platemaking contact frames for decades, that requires tight contact. Total atmospheric pressure on a decent sized vacuum bag would be measured in tons. I know with my vacuum chuck I have to be careful how much vacuum I put on a thin wall bowl to avoid collapsing it.

If you get the oilless carbon vane pump it normally has a felt filter to catch any carbon dust from the outlet and one for the Inlet to catch dirt. They last an incredibly long time and are very simple to rebuild if the vanes wear out.

Thats going to be a lot of work! Be aware of the inclusions where the tree grew together, sometimes they dont grow solid, just mold tight to each other with a layer of bark between and will come apart at some point in the process if not bonded with CA or epoxy. Good luck with it.

Something to remember when dealing with crotchwood and rootballs is bark inclusions. Sometimes they can be pretty solid and turn quite well. Sometimes if theres too much of it the piece will come apart. Whack it with a hammer before putting it on the lathe or otherwise torture it to see if it will let go and never trust it unless you can see solid wood holding it together. I have soaked inclusions with CA as I get near final size to keep pieces from coming loose.

This piece was an interesting crotch piece but Ricky managed to have it mostly dry by the time I got my hands on it. It only had very minor checking that filled in with finish. Dont forget the root ball if you have to dig the stump up to clean up the area, the grain can get wild looking in it. This one was from a black walnut root. A pressure washer is your friend when dealing with a rootball, the embedded rocks can be pretty annoying.

My thought is the rolling pin needs to be made from straight grained dry wood, no pith in it, otherwise you run the risk of it warping and splitting. I would definitely wait until after you get back to do any cutting on the logs, as soon as you open one up the drying starts. The bark will keep the moisture in a long time. The shed sounds like it could work as long as you can keep the wood from drying too fast.

Chestnut those crotch pieces have potential for great pieces if you can get it split and roughed out and dried carefully and slowly. Sometimes I will soak a knot area with thin CA to ward off cracks. I’ve split them with wedges and chainsaw, cutting will give you a smoother surface for mounting a faceplate.