About a half dozen members turned out to watch Denny turn a chalice as a demonstration. One of our club members had asked him to turn one as a gift for a new priest at his church. Before the demo, Denny had used his CAD program to design the chalice, and he had cut pieces of mahogany and pine and glued them into a blank.
In making the blank, he had to be very accurate with the sizes and placement of the contrasting colored woods, or the finished product would look uneven. Then, before he could turn it, he had to plan the order of the cuts so that he always had a way to grasp it on the lathe.
To make this piece, he used quite a variety of tools: a screw chuck and then his regular chuck to drive the blank, and a live tail center and then a jam chuck to support the end of the blank, and when they wouldn’t fit, he used his spindle stabilizer to support the end.
When he finished, we could see the pattern of crosses and other decorative work out of pine in the side of the mahogany chalice.