This one is a piece of White Oak that for some reason, I had roughed out into a really, really weird shape.  Really weird!  Like, there-must-have-been-alcohol-involved kind of weird.  To make it even less attractive, the blank warped multiple directions, so I didn’t think I was even going to be able to do anything with it.  What I ended up with, after getting it mostly back to round, was this monstrosity.  I tried to disguise the ugly by adding some lines of black epoxy putty in the hopes that the black lines would keep a person’s eye from seeing the sides of the bowl are cinched in.  FAIL!

Some time ago (late 2013?) I scored a bunch of wood and rough turned a bunch of bowl blanks.  After a couple years of air drying, the bowl blanks are ready for the final turning.  The good news, is I have ample projects just waiting to be completed.  The bad news is that three years ago, I was really only seeing one style of bowl in my head when I did the rough outs, so I’m going to get a whole lot of the same style of bowl as a finished product.  20 or so…  Makes it kind of boring after awhile.

The first one was from a piece of ash wood, which is more of the tree that was taken down by the mother of one of my daughter’s friends.  Not a whole lot of interesting grain to look at, but it turned out well enough to avoid the labor day wiener roast fire.

This bowl is not new.  I made it a couple of years ago out of what I think was mahogany and cumaru.  I thought there would be a greater variance in the color, but the two just kind of blended together.  It was an early attempt at segmented turning that didn’t turn out as anything more than a practice piece.  It was slated for the fire!  My daughter Emily and “claimed” it, so I let her have it, hoping she would turn it into some kind of planter that would hide the issues visible on the inside.  Time passed and earlier this year, while In the process of moving back into the house, it got left in the trunk of her car with several potatoes in it.  That was not a typo, there were actual potatoes sitting in the bottom of the bowl.  They rotted and left some kind of nastiness in the bottom, that ruined the finish.  I thought it was finally ready for the match, but Emily has really big, brown eyes, so Itook it back down to the shop and had to do some work on it.  Still don’t like it, but at least at this point it doesn’t stink.