Hi, and thanks.
Rob, I don't know about most olive wood, but this Russian olive is not very dense at all. It is a very lightweight and fairly soft wood. It was in a bucket of shorts of various species that I bought at a wood show and was labelled Russian Olive. That is what I am going by.
It would be better to use a denser wood than this, for sure. Soren turns the one in his video out of cherry, which would be good. Hard maple would also be good.
Having said that, I must admit that I have never tried either of those woods.
When I first saw Soren's video I went out the shop and turned one out of a piece of softwood 4x4. I think it was pine or spruce. Then I turned a small one out of walnut:
That was a year or two back and I hadn't tried any more. I posted this picture on a forum last week to illustrate my reply to a question on chucking them for hollowing the bowl and had a couple of people asking to see a video of how my custom jaws worked so I made this video. This scoop in the video is the third one I have made and the first in over a year. I was quite pleased that it turned out at all, let alone as nice as it did.
Both offsets are along the same radius line and in the same direction from center.
I don't remember having any problems with my drive center when I made my earlier ones and that would have been a regular 4 tine spur center since I just got the Stebcentre about 6 months ago.
Take care
Bob