When my oldest daughter was pregnant with my first grand baby (a boy) she had a baby shower. The “theme” was “chevrons”. I don’t mean to sound like a typically dumb guy, but I honestly didn’t know that baby showers had themes. I just thought it was a chance for family and friends to get together to say congratulations and maybe leave behind some diapers. I also knew what a chevron was, but didn’t know you could use it as a “thing”. Hell, I didn’t even know there needed to be a thing!

I made a bowl to hold “stuff” for the party and even figured out how to make a chevron pattern out of wood, so I added a ring that looked like chevrons. Just to make it “baby themed”, since I knew what the impending name and sex would be, I added a little hand written blurb on the bottom, for the baby. Honestly, it was that straightforward.

When daughter #2 told me she was pregnant, I was thrilled! She was planning on having a baby shower (a girl this time).  I had learned it was standard practice to have a shower and wondered if there would be a theme. While I was trying to figure out how to ask without looking stupid, she made the offhand comment “I wonder what kind of bowl you’ll make for her”. I had never realized I’d somehow set a precedent, and started thinking of what to make to meet the new expectation. This time, it was a plain bowl with her name and birthday added in pink inlay.

Grand baby #3 ended up having three bowls made, each segmented in purpleheart and maple. It wasn’t on purpose, just the result of making the initial bowl incorrectly due to segmenting errors.  While trying to correct my mistake, I ended up making enough replacement parts to assemble three bowls. My new grand daughter got one, my daughter kept the other two.

That was when the wheels on the bus started to wobble and fly off the axles. “early divorce” issues took priority, followed by criminal trial issues, more divorce issues, the job loss issues, the moving to a new house dilemma, then a forced retirement, quitting the turning club, starting a new job, Bob’s downward spiral and eventual passing… Just a constant string of stuff! My kids, however, kept having babies and I quickly fell behind on making bowls. Next up, regardless of what else was going on, was daughter #3’s first son. I remember sitting in court, waiting for the trial to start while working out logistics for what would be a very complex bit of segmenting, where each segment would be one character in the baby’s name, and each segment would be 3D printed and filled with epoxy. My attorney, thinking I was working on some court related issue, would see the sketches and calculations and ask what I was writing out, assuming it was divorce related.  I tried to correct her, explaining  that it was the plan I was working on for a new bowl for the next grandson, but I don’t think she ever understood. Eventually, this plan became THE plan, but there were problems.  I didn’t know if I had the skills to pull it off, I didn’t know much about working with epoxy, yet, and there was still a pesky little court order that prevented me from buying a 3D printer.  Even if I got one, what I wanted to do with the 3D printer wasn’t exactly beginner level, so I knew I’d be punching underwater the whole time. I put the bowl on hold while life played out, but I never abandoned the idea.

Now that I’ve quit working, have gotten over Bob’s passing enough to turn again, and life has settled down, I realize I had become a hermit and still short on making bowls for the rest of the grand babies.

Making the bowl I had planned in court still isn’t going to happen (still need equipment and knowledge) so I had to think differently. “Thinking differently” meant looking for some kind of inspiration.  It started with simple shop cleaning. I put in headphones, which I don’t normally do, built some additional shelves, then started pawing through all the old blanks and partially completed projects I had laying around. As I stacked them neatly on the new shelves, I picked up a very old piece of oak, looked at it and remembered what I had thought the wood wanted to become. Then my annoying muse, who has an equally annoying habit of pointing out all the things I’d overlooked, took over the whole project and started whispering bits of a new project in my ear. The initial plan from court was scrapped, but somehow I knew this piece of oak wanted to become something with a lid. Easy enough, but then it whispered the lid should look like a river table. No, the top of the lid should look like a river table, but the bottom of the lid shouldn’t have ANY epoxy visible, just an open space where a name and birth date could be added using a wood burner. Once the muse fully lodged its voice in my head, I knew my new plans were not going to change.

Surprisingly, the whole project came together VERY quickly. I think it took as much time to watch the epoxy cure as it did to do the rest. 

In the end, I looked at the bowl my grandson Wyatt is (finally) getting, albeit at least 5 years or so late, which looks NOTHING like what I’d planned out in court, nothing like anything else I’ve made, and nothing like the other “baby bowls” I’ve made. As I thought “I hope he likes it”, I think I heard the muse chuckle as she left.

With this one finished, that leaves only three more grand baby bowls to make and I’ll be caught up! That’s was the working theory, but then last weekend daughter #4 casually mentioned she wouldn’t mind having a second baby. I smiled and told her that’s not a surprise since she’s an excellent mother and I could see her adding another baby to the family.  I also quietly thought to myself that meant I’d be 4 new baby bowls behind and would need to get working on the currently growing list, quickly!

I wonder if the shop needs to be cleaned again, because I could really use a little help…

In the woodturning world, there’s this thing called “the funnel club”. It’s not prestigious to be a member. There are no meetings, no passwords, and no dues to pay. No one brags about being a member and absolutely nobody wants to join. The only way to become a member is to make one very specific mistake.

I joined the funnel club at least 15 years ago and had Bob (my friend and mentor) with me as an unwilling witness. Bob always told me that the first rule of woodturning is “the outside dimension of a turning must always be greater than the inside dimension”. I thought he was just making a joke. One night while just starting up the learning curve, I was working on a bowl, concentrating on the way I was presenting the chisel as it was slicing through the wood. Bob was watching me as I navigated the curve at the bottom of a bowl, specifically the part where the side of the bowl transitions to the bottom of the bowl. I heard Bob say “uh oh!”, but I just kept cutting away wood, focused on the lesson. In a matter of seconds I broke the cardinal rule and thereby joined the funnel club. I had removed so much wood that I went through the bottom of the bowl and created something woodturners refer to as a funnel. A funnel is an otherwise attractive bowl, but with a gaping hole that goes through the bottom.

Flash forward to today and I (very unexpectedly) renewed my membership. Insert face palm here!

It happened as I was trying to finish up work on a series of ash bowls I’ve been working on. While I was finishing the inside of the last bowl in the series, something didn’t look right. I turned off the lathe and looked closely at what I had done. As the understanding of the problem hit me, I hung my head in shame. I had, in fact, gone too far when removing wood, but I had done it in a very unique way. The funnel didn’t form as I was turning the inside of the bowl as expected, but I had turned the bottom of the bowl so deep that when I flipped the bowl to remove the tenon, the funnel would quickly form to ruin the project.

As I stood there in shame, looking at the project as I took it off the lathe, a slow smile spread across my face. I smiled because when I joined the funnel club way back when, Bob showed me how to fix it. He actually spent the next week’s lesson walking through the mechanics of the fix and what needs to be considered as the fix is made.

Bob’s fix was based on the premise that the hole would be enlarged until the thickness of the wood around the hole could accept what would become a new tenon made from contrasting wood. I decided to take a slightly different path. Since there’s no hole, there’s no turning to “prepare for the plug” and there’s no plug to turn. I figured I’d skip the who plug thing and fill the bowl’s divot with epoxy until the bottom thickness of the bowl was thick enough to turn. The result would be a small circle of epoxy in the bottom or the bowl. The more I thought about it, I realized I could drop the whole concept of leaving a circle, since the only important part was how thick the patch was.

Since I knew where the center point of the mistake was known, I used a compass to make a 6 sided figure centered on the bottom of the bowl. Then, using a power wood carving tool, I took some of the wood out of the bottom of the bowl, that was within the carved design. If all goes well, I’ll be left with an epoxy patch that’s shaped like the 6 sided figure.

The epoxy work and he carving went as expected, so after a day or two, I chucked the bowl back up to finish the turning. Surprisingly, when the bowl was turned around and the tenon was removed, there was enough wood left so the patch I made didn’t show on the bottom of the bowl. It doesn’t matter if it was close, the bottom line is I did NOT rejoin the funnel club!

Once again this log started out with the damage to the tree itself. As a result, the crack on the top of the bowl can be seen, as well as a dark line on the bottom of the bowl showing the damage from the other side of the crack. Not the best, but this really was a practice piece!

So this one took a long time to manifest…

At least 5 years ago, maybe closer to 10, a woman reached out to Bob, my mentor, to offer an ash log from a tree she had to have removed. She knew he was a woodturner and would rather see someone use the wood instead of fill up a landfill. It was from her house and had been a victim of the ash borer beetle that will eventually eliminate all ash trees from the ecosystem. Central Illinois has been hit surprisingly hard by this, so as time passes this wood becomes more rare. Bob was also a wood hoarder, but had stopped taking in new wood and asked me if I wanted any ash to turn. (He always joked that “you should never turn down a good piece of ash!”) I didn’t need more wood sitting around, but since I didn’t have much ash, I figured I should take it while it was available. When I asked him where the wood was and how to pick it up, he gave me the name/number of the woman who called him and I froze. Turns out this was a woman I had worked extensively with LONG before I had even started to turn wood.

Small world, eh?

I went to her house and picked up the log, telling her it would be quite awhile before I got around to doing anything with it. Weeks turned to months, months to years, and last week I literally tripped over the log. It was dry when I got it, so I didn’t have to do anything to prevent cracks, and it had been relegated to a dusty corner of the shop. I decided to take a piece of the wood, just to see if it was still good.

When I started looking closer at the log, there was a definite mixed bag. On the up side, it was still dry, didn’t show any signs of movement, and Bob was right in that ash turns beautifully! BUT… It had one huge issue in that it looked like it had been damaged at some point in its life and tried to repair itself. From the damage, it looked like the wood had a massive place, maybe 6″ or so, where the bark had been torn off that ran the entire length of the log. The really troubling part is that the tree tried to “grow over” the damaged part. Not a showstopper, but the tree was taken down long before the overgrowing process had a chance to complete. What was left, was a tree with a flat spot on in, flanked by two “rolly bits” on each side where the tree tried to cover the missing part of the tree. Worse yet, there was a huge split running between the rolly bits and the injured part. That made the prospect of using the wood somewhat limited.

When I started looking closer at the log, there was a definite mixed bag. On the up side, it was still dry, didn’t show any signs of movement, and Bob was right in that ash turns beautifully! BUT… It had one huge issue in that it looked like it had been damaged at some point in its life and tried to repair itself. From the damage, it looked like the wood had a massive place, maybe 6″ or so, where the bark had been torn off that ran the entire length of the log. The really troubling part is that the tree tried to “grow over” the damaged part. Not a showstopper, but the tree was taken down long before the overgrowing process had a chance to complete. What was left, was a tree with a flat spot on it, flanked by two “rolly bits” on each side where the tree tried to cover the missing part of the tree. Worse yet, there was a huge split running between the rolly bits and the injured part. That made the prospect of using the wood somewhat limited.

I knew the remaining parts of the “rolly bits” would crack off when I turned them, so I cut them off. As I tried to see what was left, I realized no matter how I mounted the bowl blank on the lathe, the outside of the blank would be missing part of the wood. That’s when I realized epoxy was my friend and came up with a plan to use epoxy to fill the missing part of the blank. The plan was to make a “dam” around the missing part of the blank, fill the void with epoxy, then put it back on the lathe and turn it like a normal bowl. The only thing left to figure out is what color epoxy to use. Solid color? No, that would be really bland. Layered colors? No, just did a project doing that. Mixed colors? Hummm…

I picked a bright, iridescent, orange and a bright, iridescent yellow, hoping I could use just enough yellow to bring gradual contrast, without they two colors mixing into a light orange. The thing about mixing epoxy is you have to do it blind. There’s no real indication of what you’re going to get, until everything is poured, the epoxy has set, and the turning is done. By that point, there’s no do-overs. Do it wrong and you’re out the cost of the epoxy, all your time, AND the blank is ruined. I did the pour and to be honest, I’m not unhappy with how things worked out!

This is what I ended with. Enough orange/yellow to blend well with the lightness of the ash, but enough contrast to see both colors without them fully blending. Add in the shimeriness (I’m sure that’s a real word) of the iridescence and this one came out good! Looking at it closer, the two colors actually blended together like they were meant to be together.

After all this time, I hope she likes it!

As I write this up, with the finished project setting beside me, there are some things that I noticed. First, I mentioned earlier there were “rolly bits” that i had to remove before turning, but they can still be seen. Not all of it, but on looking from the top, on the left hand side, there’s a clear line where the tree still shows the earlier damage. What doesn’t come out in the picture, is on the outer side of the bowl that isn’t shown, the wood has a permanent crack where the damage can be seen. Second, from the top, the epoxy patch is just starting to poke through. There’s too much to fully hide, but too little to make it be a accent. What’s left looks (to me) like a mistake. In hindsight, I should have turned less of the inside away to the patch was fully hidden, and taken more off the bottom so the bowl wasn’t too “bottom heavy”. Finally, I was looking at the epoxy much more closely and realized something. If you’re seen all the other things I’ve made, especially those that use the copper iridescent epoxy, it looks VERY similar to the mix of both the orange and yellow iridescent epoxy. I went back and got some projects made with just the iridescent copper epoxy and you’ll just have to trust me that they’re different, but I will admit up close they look oddly similar.

When I wrote about missing my friend, I talked about finishing a project that Bob had started and the pressure that in all honesty, consists of knowingly punching way above my weight. That has been on full display, lately.

For background, Bob had the same tendency to hoard wood that all wood turners get. When someone asks, “hey, I’ve got some fresh cut trees at my house, and I was wondering…” the answer of “yes, I’ll come get the wood” can easily come before the questions is fully asked. This was one of those times. Bob had gotten a call saying someone had some box elder logs, most of them had already been hauled away, but he could take what he wanted.

He said yes (not surprised) and asked if I would help him unload it from the trunk of his sleek little race car. I agreed, thinking I would also help him with the whole process it takes to correctly harvest green wood and get it ready for the initial turning. I had never actually seen box elder wood, but I figured it would be like any other kind of wood. As we were looking at the logs in his car, I could immediately see there were issues. The wood was still VERY wet (so it would crack quickly and easily if not addressed properly), it came from the base of the tree (which generally yields less grain variation, making the wood “bland”), there was visible damage to the wood from the way it was taken down, and the way it had initially been cut wasn’t optimal. As we started to lift the first log out of the back of his car, I said, “what am I missing? This looks like it’ll be a pain in the ass to break down and the likelihood of a decent turning blank seems pretty low”. I remember him smile and just say “bugs”.

Somewhere, an invisible bell rang and class was in session.

Bob split the log in half (longways) with his chainsaw, to let the pieces fall onto their sides. Looking at the cut he’d just made, I was immediately gob-smacked by the red and pink color that ran through out the log. I’d never seen anything like this before and just stood there. I looked at Bob, who had that smile back. He pointed to the wood and said “bugs” again. I was very confused. Then he explained that box elder is extremely soft, naturally has a very light color, and a very un-remarkable grain pattern. BUT… if the tree had been infested with the box elder bug, then Mother Nature takes over and something amazing happens. There’s something about the interaction between the bug and the wood that releases a certain amount of dye into the tree, but the bug doesn’t actually have to burrow into the wood for it to happen. That leaves the unique color and color pattern in the wood, but NOT the “bug holes” from the little critters burrowing into the tree itself. From there, and as the tree grows, whatever causes the discoloration spreads up and down the tree. This piece of wood had the unique coloration running the length of the wood he had saved.

We spent the rest of that afternoon cutting up the log, discarding the pieces that couldn’t be used because of damage or the way it had been cut, and “rough turning” what was left to allow better drying. In all, Bob came away with three rough turned bowl blanks. One split itself nearly in half within a day because of the way it had been roughed out, but not sealed. One was ok, but it didn’t have the color and was just plain, white, wood. The last was full of the color pattern and hadn’t split itself, but there was a damaged spot on what would be the underside that would have to be repaired at some point.

Then Bob died, he and his family gave me a LOT of his wood hoard, and I found myself staring at the blanks. Through quiet tears, I started addressing the two box elder blanks to see what repairs would be needed. I was in no hurry to mess up wood that obviously had special meaning to Bob, especially knowing there was very, very little chance of getting a second try at making something Bob would have been pleased with. That was the first time I chickened out. I decided to do the repairs, without committing to the whole turning. The repair part was easy, just add a little epoxy to the damaged parts and let it cure. Then I could wait. I left the larger blank sit, since I’m still thinking about possibilities, the final outcome, and to be honest it has more emotional weight to it, weight I could easily be crushed by. The smaller blank was ready. The repairs were done, the moisture level was low, so I put it on the lathe and then stopped. I was looking at the chucked up bowl and it suddenly hit me that I was actually looking at the point of no return. This was Bob’s, not mine, and if I messed up at all, I couldn’t just burn the evidence like I was comfortable doing with projects that were 100% mine. He would know. More importantly, I would know.

I took the blank off the lathe and set it aside.

For weeks, that bowl blank just sat there, watching me, flaunting the color that could be seen, hinting at promises of what else was hiding beneath the wood grain; all the while my heart slumped with the pressure of all the “what ifs” that could happen. I talked to a daughter, who told me Bob wouldn’t have given me the wood if he didn’t want me to turn it. I put the piece back on the lathe and turned it on. Starting the turning process for a second time was just as horrible! The wood turned like a dream, but I suddenly didn’t trust myself. I didn’t trust what I was seeing. I , didn’t trust my ability to make something Bob would approve of, I absolutely didn’t trust my ability to transform something Bob saw promise in into something worth making. I turned the lathe off, not wanting to risk going any further.

That’s how things went. The piece set on the lathe for days, I would eventually work on it for a very small amount of time, then turn the lathe off and go back to waiting. Over and over, day after day, as the weeks stretched by.

After talking to the initial daughter again, I made a resolution to myself that if Bob said I was good enough, well, I must be good enough to continue, so I did. The outside bit turned to show the repair had fully fixed the initial problem while managing to “blend” with the overall piece. I started working on the inside of the bowl and quickly saw the potential Bob had saved. As the bowl took shape, Mother Nature slowly revealed all the color and grain patterns that had initially been shielded from view. I took the bowl off the lathe and looked over the progress so far. The bowl, while looking like a basic bowl, flashed unique color and grain patterns that were completely unexpected. I smiled and started to remount the bowl to start the process of removing the tenon and finishing the base, but that’s when everything that could have gone wrong, did.

As I was looking at the bowl, it slipped. Not the kind of slip where you drop your phone on the couch, knowing the damage would be minimal at worst, this was like watching a phone drop down a stairwell and ricochet between the handrails all the way down while a sinking feeling that can’t be stopped plays out in slow motion. The nearly finished bowl landed on a large piece of wood I had shoved under the lathe. I heard a piece of the bowl crack, followed by a smaller sound as the broken piece of the bowl glanced off the wall of the shop. I saw it bounce up from the log, only to smack into the harsh angle of the under side of the tool rest, then land on the concrete shop floor, roll under the lathe and across the shop, and finally come to a stop after it hit the bands saw.

I just stood there, trying to process what had just happened. After what seemed like minutes, I could have sworn someone said “just leave it”, so I turned, walked inside, and went to bed. Tomorrow, I would assess the carnage, but for now, I needed to let the voice in my head have their say.

The next morning I retrieved the bowl to assess the damage. A piece had indeed splintered off the rim, leaving what looked like a bite had been taken about a half inch deep, right on the rim. I could have fixed it with the same epoxy I’d used the first time, but instead I decided to lower the height of the bowl by whatever it would take to get rid of the bite mark. The next issue was to figure out how to fix the damage that must have been done when the bowl bounced up to hit the underside of the tool rest. This left a “dent” that wasn’t just deep, it was also “scuffed up”. Filling the hole with epoxy, even matching the epoxy used on the first repair, would look horrible, so the only choice I had was to use what little thickness I had in the wall to turn out the scuffy dent. The marks left from the rolling trip across the garage were superficial and could most likely be sanded out. It felt like a plan, but there was no assurance everything would work out. More concerning, I couldn’t hear Bob’s voice in my head, just quiet.

I took a deep breath, put the now broken bowl on the lathe and started fixing things. Removing the chip out of the rim was the first part and from a purely technical point of view, the easiest to accomplish. Removing the dented and damaged part would prove harder. To get the dent out, about half of the bowl’s thickness would have to be removed. Taking that much wood away from the bowl would probably make the bowl less structurally sound, so I had to slightly change the overall shape of the bowl. I decided to leave some of the wood at the top of the bowl (that would have been removed anyway) to make the rim thicker, like there was a band running along the top of the bowl. When I was done, the dent was gone and I was convinced both stability problems had been fixed.

The last thing to do was remove the tenon and “clean up” the bottom, which was where everything went wrong before. This time, I switched chucks, carefully remounted the bowl and started on the bottom. The work done to remove wood on the side actually allowed me to make the base a little thicker than I’d initially planned, which also helped with the stability. There was enough wood there to make the “foot” wider, which made the bowl feel more solid.

I took the now finished piece off the lathe, wiped off the random dust from sanding, and set the bowl on the mini-lathe to see what I’d created. That’s when the beauty of what Bob had saved hit me, all at once. The color is amazing, the grain pattern that came out as I turned the inside is completely unexpected, but the best part was the voice came back. I could have sworn Bob was standing right behind me when he whispered “you done good”, just like he’d done the first time I made a lid for a box that fit like it was supposed to. Tears came, again, from the combination of the affirmation I took from the voice, and the realization that although I’d destroyed the initial attempt, I’d fixed it exactly as Bob had trained me. The door to the shop opened and the boy came out talking about some game he was playing, but he stopped when he saw me setting there with tears in my eyes.

“You ok?”

After a few minutes and some hard swallows, all I could say was “it’s beautiful”, but not wanting to tell anyone that Bob had already told me it was good.

The boy knew about the bowl I’d been working on, knew where the wood came from, and knew what kind of pressure I was dealing with to “do right” by Bob. Although he’s not a woodturner, he knew I had made the finished bowl sitting in front of him and that it was better than most. He paused, was quiet, and gave me a quick squeeze on my shoulder, told me “it looks really good, Dad”, and quietly went back inside.

This bowl is one of those projects that won’t be given away or (worse yet) sold, it’s different. It’ll go up on the “special shelf” of projects that I’m proud of or show some aspect of what I do that makes me proud. It’ll be kept out of the sun to keep the color pink, but also kept out in the open where I can see them every day and remember.

This one, I’m sure I’ll remember “bugs”.

This one, I really like!

It started with a square blank from a river birch tree, given to me by a friend of mine that I had sealed and put away for later. (Thanks Russ!) All things considered, it was pretty nondescript, save one part that looked like there was a little damage on the side of the blank. I finally got the chance to put it on the lathe and started turning the outside of the blank to get it round and see what I had. That’s when it got interesting! All I could see was the outside of the bowl, and it wasn’t good. Most of the bowl had a very plain grain pattern, but the damaged part was bad. Really bad!

I took the blank off the lathe and set it aside to give myself time to figure out if I should keep going or cut my losses right there by throwing the whole thing in the burn pile.

The blank got “shuffled” in the shop and ended up in a stack of partially turned projects that had slowly gotten buried. When I built some additional shelving (because I’m a poorly recovering wood hoarder) I was shuffling old projects again. When I got to this one, I’d forgotten about it and decided to look at it again.

This time, the damaged part didn’t look so bad. Yeah, there was a pretty good sized “icky” part, but could be fixed. If the inside of the bowl was at bad as the outside, I’d just toss it. If not, well, there might be a way…

I put the piece back on the lathe and started on the inside, leaving things a little thicker that I usually do, to leave space for some kind of repair. The turning was pretty easy, once I got accustomed to turning over the gap where the bad part had created a big hole. When I got done and turned off the lathe and looks at what I was dealing with. One side of the bowl was still pretty plain, but the other side – the side with the damage – had changed. The grain had a shininess that was just starting to be visible on outside. The hole had changed too, losing most of the rotted parts of the blank, leaving a hole with clean edges. As inspiration is prone to do, I knew exactly how to proceed.

This one, I really like!

It started with a square blank from a river birch tree, given to me by a friend of mine that I had sealed and put away for later. (Thanks Russ!) All things considered, it was pretty nondescript, save one part that looked like there was a little damage on the side of the blank. I finally got the chance to put it on the lathe and started turning the outside of the blank to get it round and see what I had. That’s when it got interesting! All I could see was the outside of the bowl, and it wasn’t good. Most of the bowl had a very plain grain pattern, but the damaged part was bad. Really bad!

I took the blank off the lathe and set it aside to give myself time to figure out if I should keep going or cut my losses right there by throwing the whole thing in the burn pile.

The blank got “shuffled” in the shop and ended up in a stack of partially turned projects that had slowly gotten buried. When I built some additional shelving (because I’m a poorly recovering wood hoarder) I was shuffling old projects again. When I got to this one, I’d forgotten about and decided to look at it again.

This time, the damaged part didn’t look so bad. Yeah, there was a pretty good sized “icky” part, but could be fixed. If the inside of the bowl was at bad as the outside, I’d just toss it. If not, well, there might be a way…

I put the piece back on the lathe and started on the inside, leaving things a little thicker that I usually do, to leave space for some kind of repair. The turning was pretty easy, once I got accustomed to turning over the gap where the bad part had created a big hole. When I got done and turned off the lathe and looks at what I was dealing with. One side of the bowl was still pretty plain, but the other side – the side with the damage – had changed. The grain had a shininess that was just starting to be visible on outside. The hole had changed too, losing most of the rotted parts of the blank, leaving a hole with clean edges. As inspiration is prone to do, I knew exactly how to proceed.

I took the blank off the lathe and moved it to my basement shop to start the epoxy process. I decided to use an iridescent copper color to fill the hole, built a form to plug up the bottom, mixed the epoxy, and made the pour. Everything looked good, so I left it to dry. As I was walking upstairs, I heard a noise, but didn’t go back to see what it was. It was very late, I was tired, and it was a small noise at best.

The next morning, when I went downstairs to bask in my epoxy pouring success, I instantly saw what made the noise the night before. I swore, loud, angry and more than a little bit disappointed in myself. It turns out that the “small noise” I heard as I was walking up the stairs, was the the bowl with wet epoxy falling slightly. The epoxy that hardened had partially filled about half of the hole, with the rest forming a pool on the lower part of the bowl that shouldn’t have had epoxy at all.

That was the final shot. I would NOT waste more time on the bowl, would NOT spend more money wasting epoxy, and would NOT be finishing the project.

I moved on to other things. All turning and sanding was done in the outside shop, but I still used the basement shop for carving, wood burning, adding dyes to wig stands, or playing around with other epoxy repairs to other projects. On one of the other projects, I had mixed up too much epoxy, this time a dark, metallic gray, but didn’t have anywhere to put the extra.  Since the ruined blank was sitting there, I set it back upright and poured the excess epoxy in the hole.  There wasn’t much, but I could throw out the excess epoxy once it hardened when I threw out the botched blank.  As I was leaving the table, I accidentally kicked the blank, causing the new epoxy to run, but didn’t really care since I was throwing it out anyway.  The second pour also hardened in places I didn’t want and leaked on “good” parts of the bowl, but the hole still wasn’t filled.  Next came an experiment pouring two different colors of epoxy at the same time to produce a unique pattern when they dried.  I picked an iridescent green and an iridescent yellow so I could see the contrast when I made the pour.  Since I’m not very good estimating how much epoxy I’ll need for a pour, I had extra of both colors.  Like before, I put the ruined blank back into position and finished filling the hole with the same mottled pour of the green and yellow epoxy. This time, the bowl stayed where it was supposed to, filling the rest of the hold with the final part of epoxy to harden.

A few weeks later, when I finished working on a wig stand I’d been wood burning, I decided to take out the garbage. I picked up the shop’s trash bag, added the scattered cup, wrappers, and spare papers and started to leave when I saw the blank. I picked it up, too, thinking I could take it to the garbage can in the same trip. After putting the garbage bag in the bin, I paused when looking at the blank. I figured the bowl as a whole was a lost case, but wondered what the epoxy would look like when it was turned. There were multiple layers of epoxy, all at different depths, different colors, and VERY indiscriminately poured. Against my better judgement, I took the blank and set it on the lathe.

The next day, I was bored, looking for a new project to start. I saw the blank and decided I’d turn the epoxy back real quick just to see what it looked like, then start on a new project that had been rattling around in my brain.

The epoxy didn’t turn well. Since it wasn’t a consistent surface, the tool bounced around like crazy and the epoxy didn’t cut, it chipped a little bit each time the tool came in contact. The more the high spots chipped off, the smoother the overall surface became and soon the bowl was releasing ribbons of epoxy. When I stopped to look at the progress, I was absolutely shocked at what i saw. The most obvious change was that the epoxy wasn’t the disjointed mess I expected to see. It had become what looked like a thought out pattern of colors where the turning process had created a design that looked surprisingly good. The change I didn’t expect, happened in the wood itself. Since I had left the bowl thicker than I normally would, I had room to remove more wood as I was dealing with the epoxy. On the outside of the bowl, there was a hint of a shiny grain pattern, but nothing that could really be identified. Now, the wood grain on half of the inside of the bowl had exploded into what is called “quilted grain”, with shiny grain spilling out everywhere.

I pulled the bowl off the lathe and looked at it, closely. From the outside, the epoxy looked like it was solid copper, with only a slight bit of the metallic grey peeking through and the shininess of the grain was almost incidental. The inside, by contrast, revealed the shininess barely noticeable on the outside had become a whole line of grain known as “quilted grain” that is unique. All along the line, the shininess stood out against the plain color of the wood and the starkness of the epoxy. The epoxy had shifted to where almost all of the copper and black was unseen, with a collection of the “extra” colors creating what looks like a hot spring pool. Totally unexpected!

This one started as a project destined to become designer firewood. It endured a series of accidents to finish as a truly unique piece that will be hard for me to part with. I don’t mean to be all new age in my thinking, but projects like this always make me think of how the universe works. Did I plan this? Not really. Did I expect this to happen? No, not at any point. How did the final result look so good? Well, that’s the point where I just step back and choose to believe that there has to be something, somewhere, that has influence and isn’t afraid to see things through. From the tree growing the way it did, but hiding the wood grain it truly had, to the multiple “mistakes” I made when doing the epoxy work, to the knee jerk reaction NOT to throw it away, to the way everything just seemed to work out at the very end, well, it seems pretty clear to me that I wasn’t the one controlling everything.

When I was a kid, I was in the Boy Scouts. For a short period of time, one of the scout masters was a man named Mr. Zoerb. I can only remember going on one camp-out where he was there, but remember just how much he knew about nature, starting fires, sharpening knives, and weather. Weird what sticks with you and what gets left behind.

Years went by, and there he was again, my high school math teacher. Freshman year was algebra, which I thought was pretty stupid. It always seemed like abstract concepts that wouldn’t ever serve a purpose. I remember thinking “I hope someone finds X soon, because I’m getting damned tired trying to find it”. Looking back, I may have been a little off base on that whole line of thought, because I’ve actually had to “do math” and was surprised just how much I remembered. I had him again for Senior math, although for the life of me, I can’t remember anything about what was taught. Apparently all of that was just preparatory to (nearly) fail calculus in college.

Sophomore year was different. That year, Mr. Zoerb was my Geometry teacher, and I was still convinced there was absolutely no real-world application for any of the stuff we were learning. Would I ever need to figure out the radius of a cone? Nope! The opposite angle measurement of a parallelogram? Not a chance! Anything to do with a compass? Hell no! A compass was next in the conga line of obsolescence, right up front, sandwiched between the abacus and the slide rule. That being said, geography came easy to me and as useless as it was, I actually had fun trying to solve all the little puzzles that we were given. Much to my surprise, later in life as I was doing some home-owner type projects, being able to figure out angles for trim actually called all that knowledge out of the mental dustbins it had been relegated into.

Lately, turning wood has become the dominant focus of free time and I’m finding I like doing some kind of embellishment to turned items more than I like the actual turning itself. Much of my experimentation with different processes has played out on this blog, whenever the creativity muse stops by to visit. Some might remember the project where I burned the mandala-like patterns daughter #2 had put on a bowl. (Here’s the article, for anyone who’d like to see it.) Looking at that piece, I thought “I wonder how she comes up with those patterns”, and “I wonder how hard it would be to make it look less “freehand”?

Armed only with a pencil and a will to succeed, I sketched out a mandala that I thought could easily be burned over and tried my best to make it all symmetrical and even. It quickly became apparent that drawing mandalas freehand belongs on the list of artist-like stuff I suck at, alongside drawing stick-men, straight lines, and anything that’s supposed to resemble a known object. There would have to be a better way.

So I went to YouTube to see if I could find instructions to make the mandalas look more symmetrical and less like it was done by an epileptic toddler. There, I discovered a channel called Geometry Trip. This guy does absolutely amazing work, using just a compass and a straightedge, to make the most intricate designs I think I’ve ever seen. Everything he makes is based on the intersection of circles, connecting points between circles, and all that “stuff” Mr. Zoerb tried to teach unwilling student back in the late 70’s. Suddenly, the thought of playing around with a compass actually sounded fun!

Here are the first two projects that I’ve completed. The first one is a “simple” mandala, done (mostly) by following his tutorial. I know it was a “simple” mandala, because the video was titled “How to Draw a Mandala for Beginners | Step by Step” and he said in the video this one was easy. To him, I’m sure this was barely a warmup. To me, I quickly learned that “simple” is a relative term and that I needed a better compass. New compass in hand, this was the result:

The second piece is another project that started out mimicking the beginning of one of his videos, then things just kinda strayed off course. When it was done, I decided it needed color since the last one was left bare, but it took some time to think about how bright the colors should be. I finally settled on very sedate colors, since the base color of the wood was darker. I used the “acrylic wash” effect from my old wood carving days and this is the end result. Much better than the first attempt!

I hadn’t really thought much about Mr. Zoerb for at least 20 years, but heard a few years back he had passed away. As I was making these designs, though, a lot of old memories HHS memories came back. I figure if he’s able to see these from the other side, he’d most likely approve, or at least approve more than the construction packets that we had to fill out and turn in for a grade. Guess that’s what I tell myself anyway.

Rest in Peace, Mr. Zoerb.

Way back when I’d only been seriously turning for a few years, I put some pieces in a gallery in Normal, just to see if anyone was interested in them. To my surprise, I actually sold pieces. The affirmation was better than the money. One of the pieces that sold, popped up on my Facebook wall a few days later. Turns out Jack, a guy I went to school with, and his wife bought it. Talk about small world!

Time went by, and around a year ago Jack sent me a note asking me if I wanted any elm wood to turn. He didn’t know if it’d be any good, because the tree had bumps all over it. He sent me the pictures below and my jaw hit the floor. This tree was absolutely covered in burls (or burrs, if you’re on the other side of the pond). If done right, this wood would make some of the prettiest pieces you can imagine. I made arrangements to be there when the tree guy was taking it down and carted away as much as I felt comfortable hauling in the suburban. When I got home, I sealed it to lessen the chances of it splitting and waited.

Since I haven’t worked that much with fresh burls, I didn’t know how long it would take for the wood to dry. The project I had in mind would have to be fully dried, or it would likely rip itself up shortly after being finished, so I just kept waiting.

Every time I’d pass the pile of wood, I’d check it out to see if any of it had split, and smile when I didn’t the any damage. One day, though, there was a piece on the top that seemed like it was ready. it was smaller than the rest and was a slightly different color, so I figured it was worth the risk. I put it on the lathe and turned the outside shape, taking care to see if the wood got wetter as the outside of the blank was shaped. Everything seemed to be pretty good, so I brought it inside and let it sit in silicone desiccant for a week or so to make sure it was dry. After a week of nervous waiting, I decided it was time to finish the piece.

First step was to fill all the spaces in the piece where the “good wood” and the burls had come apart as well as all the normal voids and bark inclusions that are present with any burl. iridescent copper seemed like a good choice of color and contrast, so off I went doing the epoxy work. I learned quickly that there must be more gaps inside the project than I thought, because the first pour of epoxy completely disappeared into the wood. I let it cure for a week or so, then did a second pour, thinking this would be it. No, this one also disappeared, which meant another week of waiting before the next pour. Eventually, I got it on the lathe, reshaped the outside and realized that there were still gaps in the blank where the resin hadn’t reached, yet, so it was back to the basement for more epoxy work. When I started on the inside, the same issues came up with unknown voids, so more epoxy work was needed and more time was spent waiting.

Eventually, the bowl was completed, but I needed a lid. Bob, my friend and mentor, gave me a piece of some kind of exotic wood that he’d had for many, many, years which just happened to be the right color and grain pattern so as not to fight with the chaos of the burl. I added a piece of maple, dyed black, for the finial, but on three coats of poly, and suddenly the piece was done.

I told Jack and his wife when I was there getting the wood that the first piece I made was theirs. That seems only fair and a small gesture for all the fun they had unknowingly provided. It’ll be hard to send this off, but hopefully they’ll enjoy this one and see that the tree did all the work making it spectacular to look at, I was just there for the ride!

Thank you, Jack, I can’t wait to see what else is hiding in the burl pile.

Sometimes, I just get in a mood that I can’t really define. It could be boredom, might be anxiety, could be depression, or maybe it’s just a combination of all of those. Who knows? Such was the case a week or so ago. Not sad, not angry, not lonely, not happy, just stuck in idle.

I went out to the shop, intending to make something, but instead got caught up doing a little cleaning and putting stuff back where it belonged. As I was shuffling the clutter, I picked up a little soft maple bowl I had turned green and set aside to dry. It felt pretty dry to me, so I decided to put it on the lathe and see what happened. What happened was I produced a bowl that seemed to match the drab mood I was in: Very basic shape, no spectacular grain, just ho-hum all the way around.

I sat it up on a table next to the door and started sweeping up the mess I’d made. Every once in awhile I’d look over at it, hoping some form of inspiration would hit me, but it just sat there in apparent defiance. After the sweeping was done, I picked it up, but sat it back down with no change whatsoever. After resharpening the tools I’d used, I looked at it again and started going through the usual list of things I could do. Add epoxy? No, there was no place for it to go, since I hadn’t designed that in to the overall shape. Add some carving? No, it’s way too thin for any kind of carving and way too thick for any kind of piercing. Add color? No, there’s basically no wood grain for the color to enhance, so it would just be the same lackluster bowl with a heavy coat of paint on it. As I brought it into the house, I decided it was going to be designer firewood. I’d play around with one of the new woodburning tips I’d gotten, play around with the new India ink pens, and just use this piece to practice on, catch up on a podcast I’ve been listening to, and kill some time.

That’s when something happened.

I made a circle and decided to practice making flowers. This time, though, I decided not to make round petals, but pointy petals kinda like a poinsettia. When the flower was done, it looked like a flower, so I decided to add some leaves using a technique I’d seen on a video of some woman doing henna painting. That looked pretty good, too. Then, I decided to make some “thingies” that trailed down, like seed pods or a place for bees to land. When the whole flower was burned in, I couldn’t decide what I’d made. It wasn’t a poinsettia, wasn’t any flower I could remember seeing, and it looked vaguely alien. I decided to make another one, only this time I’d practice making a “stacked” effect by having the flowers touch. That looked pretty good too, so I just kept going. In all honesty, I just kinda zoned out at that point, concentrating instead on the podcast that was playing. For the next two episodes, about two hours in total, I just kept making these alien poinsettia-like things.

When the burning was done, I started playing with the purple and green ink markers. The brightness of the greens, next to the darker purple (with the very subtle shading created by also blending in a maroon ink marker) really stood out against the bland background of the maple. I liked it!

Once the whole thing was finished, I realized that I hadn’t made firewood after all, this one actually looks pretty good! I also realized that my mood was considerably better. I’m starting to think that the way my brain has been wired (or re-wired) almost requires some kind of creative outlet to keep going. Without it, things just kind of wind down to a slug’s pace.