During the divorce, there was a brief period of time when two of my kids and I needed a temporary place to live, quickly. One of my daughters and her husband said “you can move in with us” almost instantly. I don’t think they offered that up out of some sense of obligation, like something they were forced to do, I think they were acting out of pure compassion, understanding, and even love. Even with that understanding, it was still both humbling and humiliating to have to rely on my daughter for something as basic as housing. It ended up being a very nice period of time, a chance to watch my grand babies grow, and to have those late night conversations you don’t realize were important until they’re gone.

To repay this kindness, I tried to do what I could to help with the house they had just recently purchased, by taking care of some projects that new homeowners might not notice or prioritize, check off some of the items on my daughter’s “honey do” list, and arranged for at least one significant issue to be fixed while they were working. One of the other things I did was some tree trimming, including the complete removal of a tree that was growing way too close to their house, had started to wither, and was going to be causing other problems with the foundation, very quickly. I think it was some kind of ornamental crab apple, but it had been poorly maintained over time (I don’t think it had ever been trimmed), had been planted way too close to the foundation, and was about half dead as a much larger tree had stolen most of the sunlight. I piled enough stacks of wood on the curb that the city brush collection truck filled up and we had to wait for a second truck to get the rest of it! I did, however, set one large chunk of the tree aside, the section that had been growing just above the ground, with the intention of making them something down the road, when I had a shop up and running again.

Time moved on, the chunk of wood sat by the house through the winter until I moved it to my new house, where it sat in my yard through yet another winter. During all that time, Mother Nature did what she does, trying to break the wood down, trying to change it’s color, and trying to split it in half. By the time I got the wood into the new shop, Mother Nature was clearly winning the battle! There were cracks and splits appearing in the wood, and parts of it were becoming unstable as the wood had already begun to decay. In all honesty, it looked more like bad firewood that anything usable. I cut it into a large bowl blank, which revealed two facts. First, while there was going to be some damaged spots that would need to be addressed. Still, there was plenty of good wood that could be turned, the weathering had actually added the kinds of colors and figure that only Mother Nature can truly create, and the piece was going to be large! Second, those bark inclusions were so deep and the cracks were so extensive, there was no way to spin that on a lathe and expect it to stay in one piece. Without some kind of intervention, it would explode as soon as it got the chance.

The only way I knew to proceed, was to use epoxy resin to fill the cracks, strengthen/stabilize the bark inclusions, and “glue” the piece together. Sounds like an easy process, but it actually took about two weeks to get all the places filled without having epoxy run all over the shop floor and ruin whatever got in the way. There were at least 10 different pours of resin, filling cracks and voids little by little. I also added a mica powder to color the resin that I hadn’t used before. This powder is somehow color changing. It looks sea foam green when it’s mixed, then changes to a bright purple if the light hits it just right, and once it was in the cracks, it almost looked black or very dark purple in places. Really cool effect!

Then, it was time to see how my new lathe did with large, uneven chunks of wood. After getting it mounted, the new lathe didn’t even bog down! Turning the outside shape went relatively quickly, but it revealed gaps in the cracks and inclusions where the resin hadn’t been able to get into. Before turning the bowl around to start work on the inside, there were additional pours of resin in small batches to fill the newly discovered gaps. Once everything was done except for the final sanding, I flipped it around to start on the inside.

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Turning the inside was nothing short of dangerous! At one point, I was doing something really stupid that I knew I shouldn’t have been doing, got the tool overhanging the tool rest WAY too far, and ended up getting a catch. The catch pulled my left hand into the spinning bowl, where the uneven rim took a chunk out of a finger and the tool bounced directly bank into my chest, surely bruising a rib. I got off lucky, because this is the kind of thing that causes digits to have to be reattached with pins and stitches! Two days later, I was back up and turning, just a LOT more cautiously! The rest of the turning was thankfully, uneventful.

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After the turning came the sanding! Since there was no safe way to sand the inside of the bowl, much of it had to be done by hand and each “patch” of resin has to be hand sanded up to 30,000 grit to make the epoxy look like glass. In all, it took over a week to get the sanding completed. After the sanding, was at least a can and a half of spray lacquer, with a four hour (minimum) dry time between coat before the wood quit sucking all the finish into the wood and it could be seen. Here’s a picture of the bowl after the second coat of spray lacquer. The shiny parts are where the lacquer was just sprayed and the dull parts are where the bowl instantly sucked the lacquer into the wood.

The end result, though, is stunning! This is one of my favorite pieces that I’ve made so far and was certainly one of the most labor intensive. It’ll be hard to give this one away, but it only seems right to return this piece of wood back to it’s rightful owner. Happy Birthday, Emily!

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