Bonus safety stories
I thought I’d add two stories here related to the bowl. I was machining the inside of the [first] bowl late one night and my wife came out to say she thought it was too loud and I should close the service door. The window was also open and as she was leaving, I turned to see if she could close it since I was holding the shop vac hose to pull away the chips.
Right as I turned, the bit came around to do it’s thing and bumped the shop vac hard plastic end while I wasn’t looking. The machine lost some steps and…
Nothing like making two bowls! No biggie though, I thankfully had more wood, and of all things that can happen, bumping a shop vac hose isn’t the worst. It was just nuts because I think I turned around for all of 1.73 (repeating of course) seconds. Just sharing as a reminder toward vigilance/respect for the machine.
Second story was more dangerous and I felt really stupid for it. I had machined out the inside the night before, the bowl was just looking sweet and I was too excited/rushed the next morning in my strategy to get that plywood block off the bottom. I thought to cut it on the bandsaw and in hindsight, I literally have no idea what I was thinking.
Of course cutting a cylindrical thing vertically is an awful idea. Of course if I still chose that method I should have been thinking about material support or clamping it to something else. But I didn’t. Probably 5 seconds into the cut, the blade yanked the whole thing right out of my hands, slammed it onto the table and bounced it onto the garage floor. My heart didn’t stop racing for quite a bit, both over wondering if I’d ruined another many days of work and realizing I could have had my hands pulled along with the bowl with how violent/fast things happened.
The bowl had a good gash in her, but that was about it. I masked off the area, built up a tall “dam” with hot glue, and filled with epoxy + black dye.
All said, it’s now just some “character” on the bowl.
Anyway, it’s unfortunate to learn these things first hand, though I’m sure it will change how I think of the bandsaw each time I step up to it. Hopefully these stories help others and I think it’s good to share mistakes. Thanks for reading!