So a friend of mine from the turning club took pity on me because I had to get rid of a bunch of wood when I moved. I kept some, but it just didn’t seem like something I should/could spend a lot of effort on, especially so close to bulk garbage pickup day. He’s given me several logs of different species, and when I told him I really liked turning sycamore, the next thing I know he’s backing his truck into the driveway and we’re unload chunks of sycamore so big the two of us together couldn’t lift them. He really is a good friend!

For this project, he gave me a big, nasty looking, chunk of walnut that needed a LOT of work. It had some checking, had some rotted spots that would need resin added, and it had a really odd shape from the way it was cut when the tree came down. Once I cut out where I figured the “best” place to make a blank would be, I realized there was enough wood left over to make another project. This bowl is from the leftovers. It also had some checking and had some bad spots.

I filled the bad spots with a dark red resin and decided to make it a natural edge bowl, since most of the really cool features were on the edge of the blank, hoping that would leave the cool part visible on the bottom of the bowl. When we started turning the wood, the knot on the side of the bowl revealed a rotten piece in the middle, which fell out. SO… back to the resin work. I was using a copper resin on another project, so I just used a little to plug the knothole and kept going. (Side note, what looks like iridescent copper resin when you pour it, become this gold color when it cures. Had I known it would be this bright, I would have used something else, because the two colors clash.)

One more turning session, some sanding, and a coat of Danish oil to darken it up a bit, this bowl is done.