The bowl was made from a crotch in a juniper tree with a large bark inclusion where the branch and trunk had partially grown together. Wacky grain, multiple different bits of heartwood, and all the sorts of things that make for a pretty result if you can keep the bowl from exploding on the lathe.

Finish was a few coats of Tried and True Varnish Oil, followed by Birchwood Casey TruOil gunstock finish which I used when the 24-hour wait for the T&T to cure felt like it was going to take forever.

I really like working with flawed wood like this and seeing what I can do with the wood and resin, but it was almost a month in progress, which feels like FOREVER when people keep asking, “is it done yet?”

Got the wall thickness down around ¼ inch (6 mm), but any thinner would have meant waiting even longer for the epoxy to cure and a hidden crack in the bottom of the bowl probably would’ve let go if I’d kept turning.

#bowl #woodTurning #resin #juniper

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This is a vase I turned from a chunk of Bradford Pear. I wanted to try a round-bottomed vase, without thinking about how I would hold it upright once it had something in it.

Turning the vase went pretty well. And once I had it turned I had the idea of having a sort of halo holding up the vase. Then, thinking about how I'd hold the halo, I came up with the current design, using some sticks through a halo, cradling the vase.

So I got busy and mounted a hexagon of live oak on a sacrificial face plate, and turned a wooden donut on the lathe.

Then I drilled holes for the legs, and used the offcuts to make three live-oak legs, which I painted black and finished, then glued into the wooden donut, then finished that with some spray-lacquer.

I placed the base against the vase and pencil-marked where the legs hit. I drilled shallow holes with a spoon bit and slightly rounded the tops of the legs to match. Not a perfect match, but close enough.

I then finished the vase with some carving, some enamel paint, and multiple coats of spray lacquer. It's slightly more matte than I was hoping, but I think overall it's good.

Once everything was finished, I poured some black-tinted epoxy into the inside of the vase to make it waterproof. I really need to get an old bbq rotisserie motor one of these years so I don't have to hand-rotate a piece to get an even coating on the inside of it, but for this one, it was hand-work. Then a little more 5-minute epoxy to hold the legs and the bottom of the vase together and it was complete.

#woodworking #vase #legs #woodturning #art

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Got some Russian olive from a friend last Saturday. This bowl came out of one of the pieces. There are two cracks that wanted to come apart as I was turning it, and the shape was largely dictated by another crack that did come apart (and which put a dent in the ceiling of my shop).

The lid was part of the chunk that came off. It had a branch near the middle that had rotted, so I filled that with epoxy and stuck on a handle turned from another offcut.

Mostly turned with a bowl gouge, but I also used a few scrapers, a carbide turning tool, a skew, and a bedan. Finished with homemade friction finish plus some wax.

#project #bowl #woodturning

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I hadn’t known that chokecherry grew this big, but the finished bowl is 7½ inches across and 2½ inches tall. The tree was growing next to a bridge that crosses a creek between my friend’s place and his neighbor’s near Taos, NM, so it had plenty of water to grow here in our dry climate.

I’m glad I got it rough turned as quickly as I did, and then dried it slowly in a bag full of shavings. There’s one crack that opened up which I filled with sawdust and CA glue, but otherwise the bowl held together nicely, even though it warped quite a bit.

It’s finished with a coat of tung oil, which firmed up the punky bits of the wood, and then a hand-rubbed shellac and tung oil finish. Once cured, it will be food safe.

If I get offered more chokecherry for turning, you can bet I’ll say “yes!”

#woodturning #bowl #chokecherry

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A friend of mine in Virginia sent me some wood recently, which included a blank of “definitely not mulberry,” which he had picked up somewhere. It had pretty grain, but he hasn’t been turning a lot of bowls lately, so he passed it along to me.

It took me a few days to find the right shape for the bowl within the blank. I started by getting it close, but with ½ inch thick walls, and then staring at it while I figured out what shape it needed to be.

Once I decided that I wanted a defined rim on the bowl, I finished thinning the walls (to a little under ⅜ inch, or 9mm), mostly hollowing them from the inside, though cutting the rim from the outside. I had a tiny bit of chip-out right near the transition from heartwood to sapwood, but decide to leave it, rather than removing the rim I’d made, which is a good feature of the bowl.

Finish is a couple coats of tung oil, some shellac, and Ack’s Finishing Paste. The bowl is about 7 inches in diameter, and 4½ inches tall.

I’m pretty happy with this one, and my sweetie thinks it’s a “keeper,” which means we need to find a place to display it. I guess there are worse problems to have.

#woodworking #woodturning #bowl

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I had a few white oak offcuts (or off-turnings) from another project I'm working on. Was wondering what I could do with them when a friend of mine told a story about her sister (who was a little bit crazy) sending her a piece of cake from Japan to the US. Apparently it was intact when it arrived at her house, but a month in the mail had allowed time for some mold and such to grow.

Anyway, I decided I could send her a wooden donut. It's gluten free, no carb, high-fiber, vegan, and best of all won't spoil in the mail!

White oak with fake frosting and clay sprinkles.

Mmmmm… donut!

#woodworking #woodturning #art

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My second bowl made from cholla wood and epoxy, with blue, green, yellow and red tints in the epoxy. The blue is darker than I intended, almost a black, but I think overall it works.

Sold as part of a fundraising auction to support MetaFilter.

#bowl #cholla #epoxy #woodworking #woodturning #resin

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