OK, I know it’s really too early to start thinking about Christmas.  Trust me, I feel less about myself for even bringing up the idea, let alone going down this path to actually start working on something Christmas related before December first…  It happens, though.

Three years ago it was making wooden lights on a string that had a secret compartment in them to store mementos, like pictures of past Christmases.  My intent was to make a string for each of the grandkids, so their mothers could save a little picture of each Christmas.  Cute, right?  I abandoned that when I realized if I made strings long enough for each grandkid to have 18 years of memories saved, that would end up being hella more fake bulbs that anyone (meaning me) would want to make, and that was when I only had one grandkid!  Now that I have four grandkids, that’s four times more “ick” than I would want to turn.   Love them to death, but, um, no!  I think I have one string with 6 or 8 on it and a bowl full of the bulbs that still need to be added to the wire, but now there’s the delimma of what to do with them?  If I put them on the tree, the kids will start claiming them.  If I give them to one of the daughters, it will start a sister war that is bound to get ugly.  If I throw them away, it will be met with wailing and dibs being called for the replacement string(s) I would be somehow expected to make.

Two years ago it was a family of snowmen.  These little guys were around for the pictures and the website update, but then quickly put away as the girls started showing a little too much interest in them and started making cases for who’s tree they would actually match better.  I don’t remember if they ever saw a tree branch or if they just got put “in the box”.

This year, the cycle has apparently continued.

When I was making the second honey pot, I was playing with the hot glue used to make it look like there’s honey spilling over the edge of the pot.  (Bears, especially those in the Pooh family of bears, are notoriously sloppy beasts.)  When I sat the pot down to let the glue cool, I happened to set it down next to a bird house that was awaiting a roof repair.  As inspiration is prone to do, I instantly thought, “I wonder if I can use hot glue to make it look like there’s snow or icicles on the birdhouse roofs?

I fixed the broken one, then started turning a smaller version of the bird house that would be lighter.  These would intentionally have long sloping roofs and little bitty houses.  Then, rather than leave the wood natural, I used brightly colored paint to make them look all  Christmas-y.  I finished 5, in red, green, blue, silver, and gold.  After wasting several hours on YouTube looking for a way to make icicles, I realized there wasn’t anything out there that fit what I wanted to do.  I started playing around with the glue, trying to see what was possible.  Putting the glue on and letting it drip was a disaster.  The glue will drip so fast, all that’s left is an odd bump and a long hair like string coming out of it.  Rather than looking like an icicle, it looked like something you should go to a doctor and have checked for cancer!  Trying to control the temperature so the glue doesn’t run as fast didn’t work either.  Making a “glue snake”, then trying to roll it into an icicle shape ended in burnt fingers and an icicle that looked cloudy, dirty, and more like rat teeth.

I finally tried making a flat line of icicles on a piece of wax paper that I could just wrap around the edge of the roof.  Here’s a tip:  hot glue will stick to wax paper, so don’t use it!  I switched to a silicone baking mat that was supposed to have been thrown away after the kids used it as a cutting board and the process worked better.  Much better!  After a couple of practice runs, I ended with long strings of glue that had icicles “pulled” out of them with a toothpick.  I was happy with the result, but when I glued them to the edge of the roof, there was this obvious line where you could see that I had glued the whole thing on.  Kinda like putting a racing fin on a Ford Fiesta.  You can tell people why it’s there, but even if they agree with your intent, it still looks stupid as hell!

Next up was how to add snow in such a way that it explained why there were icicles forming and to hide the seam where the hot glue strip of icicles was attached.  I tried painting on regular acrylic craft paint, but at best it looked flat, at worst it actually accentuating the glue seam.  I tried making big, thick globs of paint, but it quickly spread out across the glue crack into a sloppy looking mess that didn’t give the 3D effect I was hoping for.  It also didn’t hide the glue seam.  The last resort before a trip to Hobby Lobby was using white “puff paint”.  That seemed to do the job for hiding the seam, but I’m not sure it has the look that I was going after for making fakes snow on the roofs.  Either way, these are now good enough to be added to the yearly tree decorations.  That means the race is gonna be on this year.  One competitor is a team of my girls, fighting over who gets to include them in their Christmas stocking.  The other are the cats, who are certain to get their little feline jollies breaking them within 6 hours of them being displayed.

Still contemplating if I should add little bitty birds to the houses or not…

Before I left work, a guy I worked with asked me if I wanted some ash logs.  I had gotten some wood from him before and made him a bowl out of it, so I figured “sure, I can always use more wood”. We made arrangements to pick up the three logs, like some kind of drug deal in the bottom floors of the parking deck.  He warned me they may not be useable.  I believe his exact words were, “these have been sitting outside next to the garage for quite awhile, and I can see some cracks in them, so they may not be all that great.”

How bad could it be, right?

Saying this wood was bad was like saying Hitler had some racist tendencies.  True, but no where near the true reality of the situation.  There were open cracks along the entire length of the logs, the ends were checked everywhere you could see, and judging from the coloration of the wood, some of it had already started to rot to the point I’m not sure it would even make good firewood.

The first log I cut in half, promptly threw the half that must have been laying on the ground away, and tried to cut a bowl blank out of the rest of it.  what I ended up with was one bowl blank, about 7″ across, that still had a suspicious looking crack running through it.  Perhaps that one can be repaired.  The second log was even more split.  I cut it into small blanks that I took to Youthbuild when I did a training class for the students, letting them make small spin tops out of the wood.  Since the final products were small, I could throw away the bad part and use the rest. I’d guess about 70% of that log was discarded.  The third piece was a section of a crotch in the tree (where two branches split apart) and seemed to be more solid.  I cut it in half, lengthways, between the piths, and ended with one piece that was about 13″ across and six inches thick.  The other piece was just as wide, but was only about three inches thick, and because of the weird shape of the outside of the tree, that piece was discarded.

Yesterday, I finally got around to working with the wood from the third log.  After cutting it into a round blank and mounting it on the lathe, it because clear that somehow, miraculously, this piece of wood was actually solid.  I quickly turned the outside of the bowl to remove the bark and to see the condition of the wood.  The sapwood on a tree is always the first to breakdown, and you can’t really see what you’re working with until all the bark is gone.  What I found was that the wood had started to spalt.  Spalting is the first stage of the tree decomposing and is caused by bacteria that starts to break down the wood, typically leaving black likes running through the wood in a really intricate pattern.  This wood had that, but it also had a type of spalting that made green lines also run through the wood.  While there’s a specific scientific name for the different strains of bacteria that causes the various colors of spalt, I don’t care.  I just called it gorgeous!

I flipped the bowl around to hollow out the middle of the bowl and about half way through, the tool suddenly felt like it was cutting funny.  When I stopped the lathe, I realized there was a spot in the blank where the wood was running at a really, really weird angle.  It was also still wet.  The combination of the grain orientation and the moisture caused the tool not to cut the wood, it just kind of yanked it out in clumps like one sister pulling hair in a fight.  Not good!  I saturated the wood with lacquer that had been thinned way down and left it to cure overnight.  My thought was this would stiffen the wood enough to let me get past this bad spot.  This morning, I sharpened my bowl gouge and resumed the inside.  MUCH better cuts, much cleaner surface, and much faster progress.

Below is the finished product, that ended up being 12″ across about about 3 1/2″ deep.  Not Not sure this one will go to the gallery to be sold, it may find itself sitting on a table in my house.  The pictures don’t do this wood justice.  There is quilting that runs throughout this bowl, placing lines of chatoyance that run perpendicular to the grain pattern.

Our club president had a very large hackberry tree blow over in a storm and like any good woodturner with this kind of luck, he offered up free wood for anyone who wanted to come harvest some.  Yes, only wood turners would consider a storm knocking over a very old and very large tree as good luck…  From the initial pictures Roger had posted, it was clear there was going to be a LOT of chainsaw work necessary to clean up the mess.  I didn’t really need anymore wood, but Roger’s a good guy, so I figured I could spend an afternoon helping him cut, assuming my back didn’t cut the day short.  After a couple hours, the main trunk of the tree was pretty much reduced to workable pieces and several smaller blocks were cut to be made into bowls or platters.  When I packed up my saws, I loaded a few pieces of wood into the truck as well, figuring it was less that Roger would have to haul off and maybe some day I’d be able to do something with the wood.

One piece of the hackberry seemed to be baiting me as it sat on the wood pile in the garage.  It was about 11″x5″ square, had an extremely consistent grain pattern showing through the edges and sometimes, when the light hit it just right, it seemed to flash a little bit to indicate there was something better hidden in the wood.  I resisted for about a week, then cut it round and did the rough turning.  Still being green, it turned like an absolute dream!  I felt like a pro as long, thick ribbons of wood flew off the end of the gouge and left a wet spot on my shoulder as the wood hit me in mock protest.  When it was roughed, I sat it aside to let it finish drying.  What I thought would take 6 months or so actually only took much, much less time.  When I checked the moisture content last week, it was well within range, so I excitedly put it up on the lathe for the final turning, all the while imagining how striking the grain pattern was going to be.

It wasn’t.

What I ended up with was a incredibly pale bowl, absolutely devoid of color, with growth rings so close together at the top they’re almost imperceptible.  Honestly, I didn’t see that coming.  I sat it aside for a week, fully understanding that each time I walked past it the wood had gone from baiting me to mocking me.  Today, I decided that if the wood didn’t have any color, I’d rectify that little problem.  I wiped it down with blue aniline dye, hoping to bring out the grain because of the contrast.  All it did was turn it into a splotchy mess, since apparently hackberry doesn’t stain evenly.  I’m pretty sure I heard laughter from somewhere.  Not being one to admit defeat, I pulled out the airbrush, which allowed me to focus more stain into the areas that were resisting.  Once the stain was blended and dry, I added two coats of liming wax, hoping that would accentuate the grain more.  For those who’ve never heard of liming wax, it’s like the Desitin lifeguards put on their noses and mom’s put on diaper rashes, only thicker.  In theory, it only “sticks” to the growth rings, making them “pop” against the base color.  What I was expecting to end up with was a dark blue bowl, with white growth rings standing out.  I’ve done this on ash before and the effect is wonderful!  For hackberry, since the growth rings were so close together, what I got was this pale blue bowl that only shows the growth rings on the bottom half of the bowl.  The more I look at it, the more it reminds me of a pair of blue jeans for some reason.

I still have to let the liming wax finish curing, then I’ll buff on a coat of carnauba wax, but for now, I think I’m going to count this one as a win!

Still cleaning stuff up, still finding forgotten projects that need to be finished.  In this particular case, it was a roughed out honey locust bowl blank that had tried to hide under the workbench.  When I fished it out, I noticed it had several large cracks where the wood had started to split, no doubt it’s feeble attempt to make itself less attractive and thereby less likely to be turned anymore.  This is very, very common with honey locust, mostly because that wood is sneaky and cowardly.  It could have also had something to do with the idiot who roughed out the blank knowing it was extremely wet, but didn’t take any precautions to seal the grain.  DOH!

I decided to fill the cracks with resin, then go ahead and finish the bowl, so I started looking through all the color pigments that could be added to the epoxy.  Given the unique color of the honey locust heartwood and the lighter, almost yellow sapwood, I knew it would be a challenge.  Purple, pink, and red wouldn’t blend very well.  yellow would look way too bright next to the heartwood and get lost in the sapwood.  Green is always ugly.  Light blue looks too unnatural. dark blue too dark, and royal blue to cartoon-ish.  Orange would fight the sapwood color.  Black would accentuate the cracks, but in a bad way.  White looks like it was meant to be something else…  Nothing looked like it was a good match, so I settled on no color.  Since casting resin dries crystal clear, the actual color of the surrounding wood shows through (to some degree) and the resin ends up kinda looking like sap that’s been “frozen” in the wood.  In the end, I kinda like the way it turned out!

My friend and mentor, Bob, took down a birch tree at his house.  Not a huge tree, but big enough to yield some small bowl blanks.  We put one of the bowl blanks on his lathe to do the rough turning, while we talked and solved the great problems of the world.  Often times, there’s more talk than there is actual turning, but either way, it’s a great way to spend the evening.  When we were done, he gave me the roughed out bowl to take home and finish after it had dried.  I stumbled across the blank earlier this week and after checking the moisture content, realized it could be finished at any point in time.  I also saw that it had spalted during the drying process, meaning the wood now had those black lines running through it, which I think makes it look twice as pretty!

Chucking it up, I instantly remembered the roughing process.  The blank had a “weird” initial shape to it.  Being taken from the crotch of the tree, there was one side that would present a problem if we made it into a traditional bowl.  I remembered we considered making it a traditional natural edged bowl, but again, the funky place in the blank would have made even a natural edged bowl turn into a tiny bread plate.  To solve the issue, we had to mount the bowl at a weird angle, meaning the grain wasn’t horizontal or perpendicular on the lathe, it was off at a pretty extreme angle.  Not to get too technical, but this orientation of the wood dramatically changes where the end grain on the bowl will be, how the growth rings will look, and how the tools will react while it’s being turned.  It will also make one side of the bowl significantly taller than the other.

I also recalled thinking “I wonder if I can make the tall side of this curve in on itself”  as I started forming the outside shape of the bowl.  Turning a natural edged bowl can quickly  feel like trying to sharpen a lawnmower blade while it’s still spinning.  Turning a natural edged bowl where the top curves in on itself is like sharpening the blades while the lawnmower is running – AND – you’re wearing mittens and a blindfold.  It’s hard enough to see the one piece of wood that’s sticking out as it whizzes past, it is a whole different level of danger when the piece is curving in, yet you still have to get a tool through the spinning death to make cuts on the under side of the curve.  The wood didn’t cut cleanly, so I had to spend several hours of hand sanding to get the torn out grain and shoddy tool marks to disappear.  The answer to the question I asked myself is obviously yes, I possess the skills to make this bowl.  The next question becomes, “Why!  Why in the name of god and all things holy would you ever want to attempt something that dangerous again?”

Below is the final result.  While it’s not typical of what I’ve been doing lately, I do like the finished product.  But I don’t think I like it enough to risk severed fingers to do another one.

Cleaning up the shop is like your own private little hunt for buried treasure.  Somewhere, under the half completed projects, used up sandpaper disks, notebooks holding random scribbles written on them and the cast off bits left over from other projects, there’s a prize.  Could be a tool you had misplaced a long time ago, that bottle of dye you swore you had laying around somewhere, or the missing screw that had hit the floor and rolled.  Generally speaking, the bigger the pile you tear into, the bigger the treasure buried underneath.

When I moved the jointer out of the way so I could vacuum behind it, I found a half log of white oak that I had forgotten about.  My guess is it had been there at least two years and had developed a pretty sizeable crack that would need to be dealt with.  I cut a blank out of it, added some CA glue to the crack to make it more stable, then chucked it up to see what it could be.

As the outside of the bowl was being shaped, I kept seeing these weird color lines as the lathe was spinning.  For white oak, that’s not usually how the wood looks in motion, so I figured I must not be making a clean cut and took another pass, making sure to go slow and rub the bevel of the tool.  No change whatsoever!  I turned the lathe off and looked at the wood and that’s when I saw how different this piece of wood was from the other white oak I’ve turned.  Half of the log must have been starting to spalt, but hadn’t gotten very far in the process, leaving this weird, multi-colored look in the wood.  Nice!

Another hour of turning and what seemed like a solid day of sanding and this is the final product.  Looks like the treasure hunt really payed off!  Right now, it just has the Hampshire grit polish applied, so I’ll need to go back over the top with something more durable.  I’m torn between using a wipe on poly or lacquer that will give it more shine, or a matte finish that will leave the color as it is.

I found a piece of wood that I had left in the kiln quite awhile back.  The kiln had been shut down, so the wood wasn’t continuing to dry, but it had to have been in there for months.  I think it’s the last remaining piece of birch that I picked up off the curb, but at this point, I’m really not positive.

I vaguely remember putting the piece in the kiln, thinking it would be the most un-inspiring piece of wood from the tree.  The others all had features that were filled with epoxy and ended up looking better than I had hoped.  This one, though, just had a grain pattern that seemed to want to tear out really bad.  That happens sometimes, especially when the wood is really green, so I figured if it gave me the least bit of trouble once I did the final turning, I’d just chuck it in the firepit.

I’m really not sure the picture does this piece justice, because it turns out this has some really pretty effects going on in the grain patterns.  There are shiney streaks in the wood (chatoyance) that literally glow when the light hits it.  My initial thoughts were to add some kind of embellishment to the bowl, but after seeing the way the grain stood out, I’m proud to leave this one brown and round!

Ok, so this doesn’t really end in a completed project, but I wanted to take a bit to talk about a rite of passage that I just went through.

Every once in awhile, the wood turning club that I’m in gets invited to participate in some kind of public demonstration.  The venues vary, but generally, the thought is the club gets some members together, people bring mini-lathes with them, then spend whatever time they have during the event to make “stuff” while people watch.  We had a request to bring examples of our work for sale or display, and demo what we do at the “Summer Harvest Festival” in Princeville, Il.  This event was held at the end of July at a museum (of sorts) that deals with antique farm equipment.  It consisted mainly of lots of really old tractors, really old implements, and lots of really old specialty machines that in today’s world wouldn’t be allowed anywhere near the open market because of the extreme likelihood the buyer would be maimed for life.  The weather was perfect, the foot traffic was good, there was live music each day, and lunch was provided for the exhibiters.  It was a good time! 

When the request came in, my immediate thought was “I am no where near good enough to put on a demo”.  I’ve only been turning for about 9 years, and in all reality, only seriously for the last 5 or so.  That sounds like a lot, but at least for me, it just didn’t seem like “enough” experience to participate, especially with guys in the club that have been making stuff for 40+ years.  My thought was that people would come by, watch what I was doing, and somehow know that “this guy’s just winging it”!  As I was opening my mouth to agree to help, three very distinct thoughts flashed through my mind in an instant, like three distinct daydreams/nightmares playing at 1000x normal speed:

1.  The other club members watch what I’m doing for all of 5 minutes, then start calling me out for being so obviously inept.
2. That I’d be turning something only to have some kind of major accident where I’m left explaining to the EMT’s how I had caused a project to fly off the lathe, careen through the crown at a couple hundred miles per hour and seriously injury a wide path of spectators.
3. That I’d get all the way over to this little town without remembering to bring something really important that I’d need and have to just stand around, looking stupid all day.

Yeah, there’s probably some self-esteem issues on display here, but it really was the first thoughts to cross my mind.  I finally remembered a mentor of mine saying, “If you’re not trying, you’re dying”, so I swallowed hard, pushed the fears aside, and jumped off the cliff.

The drive to Princeville, for me, was about an hour and a half away.  We had all agreed to get there about a half hour before it opened, but just to be safe, I rolled in 45 minutes early.   The other three guys lived much closer, were already there and had already set up in the spots of their choosing.  This left me to set up next to the door, which was the main entrance into the building.  Me, right next to the door, in pole position, right where everyone would be walking past to see what I was doing.  All I could see was the eventual crowd that would surely be injured by my inevitable screwup on the lathe.  I also figured being the first turner they saw, if they were interested, they’d stop to watch.  The more people watching, the higher the chance they’d see my mistakes.

I decided to make some Harry Potter type wands that one daughter had requested as props to be used for another daughter’s baby shower.  Not difficult to make, not a lot of weight to injure people should it spin off into the crowd, and they’re quick and easy.  I also set out several pieces I had made, just to show off what I make.  About 10 minutes into the thing, a lady casually asks, “Are these for sale” and picked up one of my bowls.  Honestly, I didn’t see that coming.  The other turners looked at me with expectant smiles on their faces of the impending sale, but I just looked back at her with deer in the headlight stares.  I ended up not selling them, which the other members didn’t really understand.

A few minutes later, a woman with a little boy walked up and watched as chips were flying off the lathe.  I smiled at the little boy, who was watching in utter amazement at what I was doing.  I stopped making the wand, chucked up a piece of mulberry, and started making a spinning top while his mom asked questions about what I was doing.  The whole time I spoke to his mother, the little boy continued to stare with that wondering smile only little kids possess.  When I was done with the top, I parted it off and showed him how it would spin on the table.  He smiled again, as if I had done some kind of Penn & Teller-ish magic  trick.  I asked him if he wanted to try and of course he did.  It took him a couple tries, but it was soon spinning while he jumped with excitement.  I gave him the top and you’d have thought I had given him a bag of gold.

I had several older gentlemen come by, most likely retired farmers, who stopped to tell me stories of using their old metal lathes to make replacement pieces for some old model of tractor that they assumed I would know about.  People of all ages came in and looked at the work we had displayed and offered compliments.  About one in five people walking by would stop and watch or ask some kind of question.  “What wood is that”, “how long did it take for you to learn to do that”, “why do you keep switching from tool to tool”, “you have wood chips stuck in your beard”, “what do you do with all the wood shavings”, etc.  Each time, I’d shut the lathe off, answer their questions, and try to be as pleasant as possible.  It was a constant occurrence that I really hadn’t expected.  I just kinda figured people would look over, avoid eye contact, and just saunter on.

At the end of the second day, we broke camp, packed up all of our things, and were preparing to leave when the owner of the museum came up to thank us for participating.  He had been a regular at our “booth”, stopping by to see  what we were working on each time he passed.  He even bought a bottle opener from one of the other turners.  Then, he invited us to participate in a similar thing they’re going to be doing in the spring.  I figure if he wants us to come back, we must have done something right.

On the drive home, I had an hour and a half to process what I had experienced the prior two days.  Here’s what I think I came away with:

1a.  While it is absolutely true that people suck, somehow, these people didn’t.  I think it was something about the event catering to rural, small town folk, who all had some tie to the farming community and not the “city folk” who frequent the art shows or street fairs, seem to want to try to one-up the other guy, and think everyone else is there to serve them.  They were respectful, kept their kids from ripping up the displays (except for one grandma who let her 4 grandkids manhandle our stuff), said thank you, looked you in the eye when they talked and smiled.  I was expecting people who were much more hostile, much more self-centered, and much less approachable.  It made me realize just how much I miss being around small town people and small town values.

1b.  Not to be too political, but there were many people who were either wearing a MAGA hat, wearing a MAGA shirt, or had some other display of support for president Trump.  That’s not something you generally see in the city.  This event was held in “fly over country”, but it really showed me how deep of a connection there is between these people and the president.

2.  All of the initial fear that I had about demonstrating what I do was completely unfounded.  It was really silly of me to be scared of participating in this event, because the general public was never going to see if I was “good” or not, they just liked watching someone create something out of seemingly nothing.  There were no art critics, no wood turning masters, and no officials from the American Association of Woodturners circulating through the crowd, waiting to pounce.  The other club members didn’t pounce, either!  I was certainly “good enough” to be there, but I didn’t realize that until I reflected back that I was able to offer up a truthful and accurate answers for every question I was asked.

3.  If you’re going to join a club, then you’re accepting an obligation to help out the club.  There are so many clubs where 90% of the work is done by 10% of the people, while the other dolts just sit back, seemingly oblivious that everyone else is doing the heavy lifting.  Our club is no exception, although I do feel it’s fair to point out some of the member have reached an age where they physically can’t do much to help.  We passed out at least 50 business cards (with the club webpage listed) to people and invited them to come to a meeting.  As a casual marketing strategy, I think this was very successful and I think I represented the club well.

4.  It’s all about the kids.  During the two days, whenever someone with kids would come by, I’d quickly spin a top and give it to them.  One little girl came on day one with her mom and watched as I made her a spinning top out of maple.  When I gave it to her, I asked if she had markers or crayons at home and told her if she decorated it with color, it would look prettier as it spun.  The next day, they came back and she brought her top back for me to see.  She had added purple, green, blue and pink stripes to it, to match the streaks her mother had out in her hair.  She was obviously proud of her decoration and took great delight in showing me what it looked like when it spun.  Seeing the smile on her face and the way she carefully packed her (now decorated) spin top back in her tiny purse made my whole day.

5.  My old mentor was right.  Trying something new, even if you fail, is a necessary thing that you just have to force yourself to do.  I had a great time, met some wonderful people, and actually got to know the other three club members much better.  I would have missed out on all of that if I would have remained within my comfort zone, an hour and a half away from where I should have been.

The club is putting on another live demonstration in November, and if I’m still in town by then, I have every intention of participating.  It’s just too much fun not to jump in!  I’ve also started talking with other club members about setting up something more often, like an adult ed class through the town’s parks and rec department, or even our own mini-craft fair centered on making Christmas ornaments and small things for the holidays.  Now, I just can’t wait for the next opportunity to show what I do and answer questions.

I’ve been cleaning up the shop and keep finding projects that I had started at some point, then stopped for some unknown reason.  Sadly, the reason is most likely that something shiny caught my eye and I moved on to something else.  I’m sure there was a solemn intent of coming back later, but later never seems to appear on a calendar.  I decided to finish these three, completely forgetting what my initial intent was…

This is a large bowl, about 13″ across, made from some of the nastiest red oak that I’ve ever tried to turn.  There were worm holes that had to be turned around, it split while it was drying, and it smells really, really bad while turning it.  Like, really bad.  Like stagnant, slimy, leach filled swamp water kind of bad.  In the end, I filled all the cracks with dark blue tinted epoxy, did the best I could with the worm holes, and managed to make a decent sized bowl.  Being made from oak, this thing is really, really heavy!  The up side is it should burn well…

This one is about 8″ across and is made from a piece of walnut that I honestly can’t remember starting.  There must have been something funky with the initial blank that forced me to make the funnel-like shape at the bottom, because I can’t see myself making that shape if there was any other choice.  There was a channel cut near the rim, so the initial thought must have been to add some kind of embellishment there, but I have absolutely no recollection of what the initial plan was.  I decided to take a thin piece of maple, dye it “tangerine orange” and inlay into the groove.  Not sure I like the effect, but at least the piece is completed.

This one is about 10″ across and is one of the last (if not THE last) piece of white oak that I have.  Again, I can’t remember what I was initially thinking this would be, but it’s thicker than I normally turn, but I liked the shape and I had already sanded it down to at least 320.  Obviously, I had something in mind.  What I ended up doing was airbrush layers of aniline dye on the outside and adding multiple layers of gloss lacquer.  Yes, I’ve done this before, but last time it was ash, this time it’s white oak.  Kinda like the look of this one!

I was picking up some cutoff from the bandsaw in the shop and found some pieces of cherry that had been cast aside from cutting up a log.  They weren’t big enough to really make them into something by themselves, but they were cherry!  The bark was still on pretty solid, so I figured I’d at least try to do something with them.  My initial thought was to cut them into strips, then laminate them together for some kind of bottle stopper.  I considered going back into mini-bird house production mode again, but didn’t really feel like making a bunch more of them.

Then I remembered the video of a guy making what has become known as a “river table”.  For those not familiar with a river table, it’s basically two slabs of some kind of lumber, still rough cut, with the bark left on. Both pieces are laid flat next to each other, with the bark edges facing each other, but a gap between the boards.  Dyed resin is then added to fill the crack between the two boards.  If done right, the final product can look like there’s a river running through the middle of the table.  This looks really great for “flat work”, but I wondered if that same process could be used on a round surface, like a bowl?

I made a mold out of cardboard, then cut the pieces of cherry to fit the mold.  Since the wood wasn’t thick enough or big enough to use a single piece of wood, I decided to stack more cherry on top of the pieces with bark, figuring the dyed resin would fill all the gaps and look pretty cool.  the goal was to try to make the bottom of the bowl look like the river part.

That was the plan, anyway.

Turns out, I’m not that good at thinking all the way through a project, especially when I’m really excited to see the final execution.  The part that was going to be the “river”, needed to be at the very, very bottom of the bowl, but I didn’t have pieces thick enough, so I added a solid piece of cherry to the base of the mold so there was room to make a tenon.  That ended up making the river part too high and it eventually got turned away.  I also ended up making the blank too high, so it ended up being more of a cylinder.  if I made a bowl it would be tiny, and with the cost of the resin, I didn’t want to just throw it all away or turn it all away.

What ended up was this box.  I really like the look of the blue, iridescent, coloring in the resin against the deep color of the cherry.  When I went to make the lid, I realized I hadn’t planned to leave enough material on the top to make a knob, so I ended up using one that I had laying around.  The silver color seems to go pretty well, but I’m not sure if the proportions are right for the overall size of the box.  Still, I think this ended up being an acceptable piece!