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I’ve been hollowing the last couple of days.  There is a lot of volume to remove.  I’ve had to stop a couple times and do some inlay work to help stabilize the shell of the vessel as this old piece of wood has some defects that require inlay work to strengthen it so that I can get it successfully hollowed out.  The photo shows some of the specialty hollowing equipment I use.

I’ve settled on the basic shape and it shouldn’t change much.  Looks like it will be about 18.5” diameter and I’ll be starting the hollowing process next.  I still need to decide how much inlay and how many holes I will ultimately leave in the wall of the vessel.

It took some doing but I have the blank mounted in the lathe and have started rounding it out.  It was a little bit of a struggle to get it in place by myself as it weighs about 100 1lbs.  It’s always a little spooky when you first get that much mass spinning! 😅

Last fall I went up on the Uncompahgre Plateau to a friend’s place and managed to get this huge piece of “rich Lighter’d” ponderosa that I’ve been cutting up for the last few years into my truck ... it was about 7 feet long and probably weighed 800 lbs.  A winch and some ingenuity got it done.  The old tree probably fell over a hundred years ago and is really weathered as you can see on the outside but inside the wood is gorgeous.  It does have some decay and insect damage so it has plenty of places for mineral...

I’ve been working on this piece for a few days now.  Fruitwood is always beautiful and it is very prone to checking so it offers a lot of opportunities to do inlay work.  This piece was completely dry before I started turning it which means it is very stable and there should be no further movement in the wood that could start new checking.  Turning dry hard wood makes for slow, messy, and tedious turning though as I produced no shavings but only sawdust. 🙄