McNaughton Center Saver

Great excitement!  My McNaughton Center Saver arrived.  I’ve been wanting this for a long time and some recent sales of my turnings along with my upcoming birthday gave me the opportunity to order one.

McNaughton Center Saver

McNaughton Center Saver

One of the things that has always frustrated me about turning a bowl has been the pile of shavings left on the floor.   It has always struck me as such a waste of resources and potential.  By using a center saver you are able to core multiple bowls out of one bowl blank.  The system should pay for itself quickly with the wood that is saved from ending up on the shop floor as shavings.  Even with free wood there are advantages as it allows you to get more than one bowl out of a blank, increasing the number of bowls available for sale or gifts.  In theory it is possible to get a bowl for every inch of the blank thickness, so a five inch thick blank could yield as many as 5 bowls.  There are also a number of possibilities the system opens up including nested bowls.

There are three main systems on the market.  The McNaughton Center Saver, the Oneway Easy-Core and the Woodcut Bowlsaver.  Each has advantages and disadvantages.  After a lot on research on the internet, forums and talking to turners in my club, I chose the McNaughton Center Saver for the following reasons:

• While everyone seemed to feel the McNaughton had the steepest learning curve of the three systems, most agreed that it offered the most versatility of the three.
• I liked the fact that the system was expandable.  McNaughton offers three different size blade combination’s.  The mini will core bowls up to 10″ diameter, the standard will core bowls from 12″ to 16″ diameter and the jumbo will handle bowls from 16″ to 20″.   Each system comes with three curved blades and a straight blade.
• A laser guide is available for the McNaughton which helps you to see the path of the blade and prevents you going through the side or bottom of the blank.
• While not the cheapest set, it was considerably cheaper than the Oneway Easy-Core.
• The straight blade afforded the option of parting off platters as well coring vase type blanks.

There are a number of DVD’s available on the use of the McNaughton.  I purchased one from Reed Gray.  you can contact him via the Woodturner’s Resource.  Mike Mahoney and Bill Grumbine also have DVD’s available but I have not seen those yet.

Here are some more links on the various bowl coring systems:

• Using the Kelton Center Saver to make Nested Bowl Sets
• Coring out Bowls with the Kel McNaughton Coring Tool
• Bowl Saving – A comprehensive discussion
• Coring is not for the faint of heart The opening paragraphs of this PDF are hilarious!

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