Pumpkins and Logs for Turning

**Sawduster** · 10-15-2003, 12:43 PM

Well, the logs are for turning, the pumpkins for carving. The youth group of a nearby church sells pumpkins every year around Halloween for a fund raiser. They get their pumpkins from an indiginous people in New Mexico (don't ever say that I can't be PC). We have gone there to get pumkins for several years to decorate the yard for Halloween, and so it was on Saturday. The oldest daughter and Grandaughter were with us and it helped to take our mind off of LOML's sister having passed.

While the three of them were looking over the vast assortment of pumpkins finding just the right ones, I was sorta just hangin around. I notice a couple of logs of a fair diameter and about 2 ft long up by the checkout. Envisioned some nice bowls coming out of one of the two, so after the others had chosen the pumpkins, I carried them up to the checkout and asked if the logs were for sale. The lady there told me they were "meditation stools" and that she had been told to get $10.00 each for them. Well, I told her they looked like bowls to me and that I would take one of them, the one that had not been eaten up pretty good by carpenter ants. Well, we had $62.00 worth of pumpkins and she gave us $2.00 off since I was taking the log, also, for a total of $70.00. Looks to be some White Oak, and it weighed a bunch so it is probably pretty wet. I paid too much for it, but it is for a good cause, and if I get 4 bowls (at least) out of it, then it will have been worth it. May even donate one to the church.

**deathwish2** · 10-15-2003, 01:00 PM

Sounds like you should stand that log on end and set down on it for a spell and think long and hard about what you're going to turn. ;)

Quartlow · 10-15-2003, 03:57 PM

Hey if you get 4 bowls out of it thats only 2 bucks for a bowl blank, Not that bad compared to woodcrafts price for wood

**DaveZ** · 10-15-2003, 04:09 PM

Hey Mark, that was funny! :) :)

Jerry....You'll be amazed at how well wet white oak turns,do cover all exposed metal with a paste wax prior to turning, then clean up as soon as your are done. The stuff is pretty corrosive

**Sawduster** · 10-16-2003, 07:14 AM

Yeah, but I'm used to finding stuff along side the road for nothin. Well, maybe not stuff as big around as this one.

I was amazed the first time I turned some wet white oak as to the difference between it and the dried stuff I was used to. It does make a bit of a sticky mess.

**_Tony** · 10-16-2003, 08:54 AM

Jerry,
Whatever you turn out of them and how ever many doesn't seem to be the case here, it's just the fact of the "cause" that really is all that seems to matter. Seems to me that these "meditating stools" found the right spirit.

Tony

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**Sawduster** · 10-16-2003, 12:02 PM

Mark,
Only problem with that is that once I get it fugured out, then do the cuttin on the log and get it onto the lathe, I will have become a victim of oldtimers disease again and not remember what I decided to turn while meditating on the matter. Either that, or I'll doze off sitting there and fall over and hit my head on some sharp corner of something or other. :7