Kelton Hollowers

After a six week wait my set of 5/8" shaft Kelton hollowers arrived(I had to wait for some to come into the country). With the hectic way my life is currently it has taken me another week to try them out!!

Wow, these things are fantastic, my captured bar hollowing rig loves them! I'm easily halving the time it takes to hollow a vessel with these as they cut away the excess wood so quickly and effortlessly and leave a decent finish from light finishing passes. All this is easily done through a hole of less than an inch across. They are easily the least 'fancy' looking hollowing tools I have tried and by far my favourite to date!

The piece pictured to the right of this text was the first thing I have hollowed with them, a fairly basic shape

made from a piece of fairly rotten Elm(well half rotten, the lighter half in the pic!). I was so impressed with the hollowers I put another 'better' piece of Elm on the lathe to make a wider, flatter form to test how the Keltons could reach far into awkward corners. Using my captured bar rig I could only reach within half an inch of the desired thickness right at the shoulder, so I put the most curved hollower in a tool handle from one of those expensive hollowing tools and could easily reach all the way. The best bit about this was that they work as a handled tool just as easily as they do in the rig.

This second form was turned side grain as the Elm has such a wonderful stripe to it in this orientation. The lid is a piece of ebonised Beech and the finial is turned from 6mm diameter aluminium bar.

The bottom line here is I wish I had the Keltons right from the start, I have four other specialist hollowing tools, two of which were pretty expensive and in my very humble opinion they don't hold a candle to these beauties.