Not strong enough

Over the weekend I swapped a whole lot of “mystery” wood with Steve Earis (who, it must be said, is a most generous fellow wood turner). Amongst the pieces I took away were a few small half rounds of yew, some of which I converted promptly into rough turned bowls.

A cutoff from one of these pieces was too small for another bowl, but too big to just throw away. So I decided to make a winged box out of it. It all went rather swimmingly, until I decided that it was time to revers mount it, so that I could finish the underside of box and wings. I had deliberately left the box walls at about 5mm, thinking “will need some strength here, otherwise this is just going to fly off the chuck”.

When I tightened the chuck in expansion mode (so as not to leave any marks on the outside), I went just that little bit too far. Ominous sound -> visual inspection -> firewood. That’s how fast it goes. Not even the wonderwood yew was up for this.

Lesson learned. Next time I’ll use a jam chuck. Not brilliant either, and probably needs the tailstock up against the box bottom, but at least I will have a finished box.

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