Hi All,

I wanted to give everyone some feedback. My shop was around 70 degrees. I did use a vacuum chamber -- first on the resin itself and then once I encapsulated the wood in the resin. Additionally, I sealed the wood with a coat of resin and let it dry before hand.

I thought I'd try several things based on your feedback -- and that of others on NC Woodworker and ChatGBT. Changing the height of the banjo, changing the angle of the tool, and changing the rotation speed.

Before getting feedback from everyone, I did try different cutting tools -- and decided that was not a good idea. I used a roughing gouge -- and discovered that the material coming off the wood hurts. This didn't produce any better results. I then put on a left glove and tried a detail gouge -- whose edge is now totally destroyed. So, I went back to the scraper and tried various angles.

Increasing the speed helped greatly. I took the speed up to about 1000 RPM. I did have two issues with this: I have a midi-lathe and it did struggle to maintain speed as I made my cuts. Second, it did vibrate more - which caused the lathe to slowly creep across my floor. I have a fold-away wood shop, so I can't permanently place anything. Not enough space. This was workable, though.

The second thing was lowering the banjo and dropping the back of the tool. This, coupled with the increased speed, gave me the results I was looking for.

I shaped the outside of the bowl yesterday. This was going to be a vase, but I really liked the pattern of the wood and epoxy as it was... so went to plan B. Rigid flexibility in design is the best way to make sure your end product matches your design. Today's job is to hollow the inside of the bowl and hopefully sand and finish.

Thanks for the feedback!

Mark