advice on cutting

[hawkeyefxr]

I have come by some cherry and would like some advice on the best way to cut it for bowls. As you can see from the pictures i have marked the bigger piece with felt tip pen to find the centre. It is a ovalish shape and thought of cutting it in half along the grain, then in half again half way down the grain making four small bowls. The length of that piece is about 11 inches. If i just cut it in half there would be to much wasted in the turning.

The other piece has a natural foot so i thought i would use that, cut down the 'wings' and maybe have something left for a smaller project.
The cherry is the first piece of nice wood i have had to turn so want to make the most of it. I have also realised how hard it is to write down how i was thinks about cutting it and making it understandable.

 

[wm460]

With a bandsaw.

 

[Dalboy]

I would cut it like this or very close, but making sure that one of the cuts goes through the centre pith of the log and not the centre of the diameter. Where the cut goes through the branch you may find some feathering which can add interest to a piece.

As for the second one yes what you say is a good plan as long as long as you don't get radial cracks when turned from the branch ends unfortunately you can never tell until you try some you will win and other you lose I have found logs and some I ended up throwing away.

After cutting and if it starts to split look at them again to see what could be gained from that ie some spindle blanks and smaller piece can be used as inserts in box lids and the most obvious pen blanks.

Like most things it is difficult to say without seeing the log alot of how to cut comes from experience after cutting a few and making the mistakes

 

[Penpal]

Beware of the existing deep cracks,it looks heavily coated from here and difficult to see into with the flare. Have fun mate I would be like Derek and throw away rather flog a dead horse so to speak.

Peter.

 

[Phil Dart]

Are you certain that's cherry Ken?

 

[hawkeyefxr]

Thanks for the replies. When I said cut in half I did mean through the centre of the wood.
I treated the end with pva but gave the cracks I good drink of CA first.
I go the wood wrong, it's Yew.
I would like to be able to bandsaw it but it's way to large for my table top one. Will have to be a chain sawm

 

[Graham_C]

I'm interested to see how this turns out! Got a few pieces to use myself