This is the VB36, the most incredible bowl lathe on the market. It's capabilities? Almost anything. On the small end, the lathe is really too much for small, detailed work, though such is still possible - the tool rest I-beam is cumbersome for fine work, and also slow. But from the mid-sized bowls and vases all the way to pieces of timber 8' in diameter, no lathe comes close to such competency. The lathe itself weighs in at over 650 pounds with 90% of the weight concentrated around the 2 1/2" mandrel. The spindle itself is far from simple ball bearings, but is actually machined like aircraft bearings, a solid machined shaft floating on a film of oil encased in two machined sleeves, all with almost no detectable radial clearance. The 2 HP motor and multi-ribbed pulley system has enough torque at 50 rpms to allow me to turn a peice of wood that weighs many hundreds of pounds. It's enough to say that I think quite highly of the lathe!

This is the messiest, most destructive part of woodturning: roughing out the bowl! But even though it destroys any semblance of order in this corner of my shop, this is the most enjoyable stage of woodturning. I start this part of the process with a piece of wood that has only been chain sawed to an approximate circle - from there it takes a lot of hogging off wood to get a round bowl, with some appearance of the future curve I'll eventually finish turn, when the wood is dry.  

This is some very fresh American Beech in the picture. I captured the flying shavings as they came flying out of the flute of my Glaser gouge, but what you can't see is the 360 degree circle of water (sap) that is slinging around the lathe. The wood is so fresh, just the spinning of the lathe throws out more water than you can imagine! It's pleasurable to turn such wood though; the sap pours down the flute of the gouge, and keeps everything nice and cool - as a contrast, old, dry spalted beech can get so hot, after one pass around the exterior of a bowl that last inch of the gouge can literally burn your fingers.  

The VB hard at work - the logo for the lathe, from Hegner UK, Inc, says VB36 "Master Bowlturner." The lathe is owned by many a true master bowlturner, and can certainly aid a turner in producing fine work - but the lathe is only a small part of the work. A fair curve still has to be turned by a steady hand and careful eye - something I can only say I'm working towards!

This is what turning a few big bowls does to my shop: mountains of shavings everywhere! It doesn't take very many large bowls to fill my shop with such a mess - this is the mess from less than a dozen bowls!

Three massive Beech bowls, each approximately 24" in diameter, taken from a beautiful log some 75-85 years old. At this point I have 2, close to 3 hours in each bowl you see sitting here.The tree was pushed over with a big front end loader some three miles down the road, to make way for a new subdivision. Two good friends spotted the log for me, and not only pointed the log out, but helped me cut it and haul it to my woodyard - many thanks to Doctor Hill and Jim Denson for all their tremendous help.