What to do with badly checked bowl blanks

Has this happened to you? You cut out several large bowl blanks, carefully sealed the endgrain, stored in a dry location. When you return to turn the blanks you find:



This!
Those checks go in at least 2 inches.
Here is one solution beside the obvious firewood one.
Turn a winged bowl like the one illustrated below:



Here is the procedure: Mount the bowl between centers. (I use a homemade cement nail drive center that fits in my chuck.)





Above: This will be the TOP of the bowl.



Here we have the bowl top held in the chuck after initial turning between centers.
(This is a different bowl and different wood from the previous pictures.) Ready for turning the bottom. This will be turned rough, allowed to dry and then returned.



Here is the bottom of the bowl partly rough turned.

Now we have to wait a bit for the wood to dry.

OK time is up.



The wood is dry now and has been remounted. I drilled a hole in the edge in order to gauge how thick it was as I turned the "wings".



Here is what the bottom of the bowl looks like. The hole through the wing indicates how thick I left it. (About 3/16 of an inch - 5 mm)



Here is what it looks like before cutting it down on the bandsaw. Note there is a line drawn to saw to. The piece with the hole will be discarded as will the opposite side.



This picture shows the completed "winged" bowl.

Thats it folks


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