A year or so ago I turned a really crappy bowl out of an equally nasty piece of willow. It was so ugly and so poorly turned, I decided to use it to practice dying wood. Since the wood and the turning was bad, the dye job turned out absolutely horrendous! It was literally sitting on the top of the wood pile to go to the fire.

My daughter Courtney asked if she could do some pyrography (wood burning) on it.  I figured why not?  I’m gonna burn it anyway, and if I’m lucky, she’ll set it on fire with the wood burner and save me some time.  What she was able to make out of my mistake actually turned out looking pretty cool!