Gary Beasley
Member
This one almost didn't make it. As big as this longleaf pine cone core was it barely survived having a 27/64th hole drilled through it. I lost more than a quarter inch when the bit broke the wall at the narrow end as I drilled it. After that everything went smooth till I was roughing down close to size with the tip of the skew and a huge jagged chunk blew off. I found most of it and packed the crack with dust from the turning. I thought I was safe, but nooo, it blew out again, a smaller chunk but I only found half of what flew. More dust and glue and some very careful turning got me to the finishing stage. At that point I found I needed to filled several natural scallops with thick CA to make an even profile. By the time I was done you could almost believe I had done a good job on it. I found one spot I hid under the clip where the brass tube showed at the end of the barrel. I never saw that when I was doing all the dust packing. If you look carefully you can see the big crack going through the flame figure.