It did not go entirely smoothly. In the course of drying out, it bowed very slightly, which made it very difficult to remount on the lathe to turn true. Unfortunately I'd already turned the shell down quite thin, and truing it up on the lathe made it thinner still.
Never mind, lesson learned for next time.
I had my first go at turning green wood today, and cut this goblet rough from a bit of the silver birch I cut down and cut up recently.
It will have to dry out a bit before I do anything more with it. The green wood handles quite differently to when it's dry, and it's a lot softer and spongier. It means I get nice long ribbons coming off the gouge, but the surface doesn't get as smooth as on dry wood and I doubt that I could polish it very well. You can see that the lip of the goblet is a bit furry, where the fibres have torn rather than been cut.
It'll take a couple of months to dry out sufficiently for finishing (though I've read that you can microwave it for more instantaneous results... I might try that one day) and I'll just have to hope it doesn't crack while it's drying.
This may seem at first sight to be a pile of junk, but to eyes that can see it's a goldmine.
I shifted a bunch of timber from a place where I couldn't see it or get at it easily, to somewhere I will see it every day, and still can't get at most of it easily. There's a variety of timbers in there: pine of course, and also some rimu, kwila, oak, sapele, ash, and even a little bit of cedar.
All waiting patiently to be turned into something else.
It's not ideal; I really ought to get it all raised up off those damp bricks for a start. I have some pallets that will do that job, but that doesn't really address the access issues, which seem to be perennial with any lumber stack. I'll also need to think about protecting it from the weather, but a tarp or two will do that job, if in a fairly ugly fashion.