Mopane hollowform

Last week Emma Cook (The Tiny Turner) was the demonstrator at my woodturning club (Lincolnshire Association of Woodturners). For the first part of the demonstration she made a pseudo hollowform from a piece of spalted beech. This is basically turned like a box and instead of the lid being proud it is inset into the body as a thin disk with a hole and shoulder in the centre. This lid is a tight fit but it is glued in place so it gives the appearance of being made from one piece of wood.

I decided to have a go at making one of these out of a piece of Mopane and then doing some decoration on it using my Rose Engine lathe. The hollowform is 90mm tall, 65mm in diameter and finished with 2 coats of gloss lacquer. The basket weave pattern on the side was made with a 3mm wide cutter and a 24 bump rosette. The rosette was phased only one third instead of the usual half to give a different pattern. This was an experiment and I like the resulting pattern.

The top of the hollowform was decorated using a 12 bump rosette and a 1.2mm end mill cutter. The light coloured stripe in the lid is the side of a small branch which shows as a knot in the side of the hollowform in the photo of the side. It was an interesting turning