I was picking up some cutoff from the bandsaw in the shop and found some pieces of cherry that had been cast aside from cutting up a log.  They weren’t big enough to really make them into something by themselves, but they were cherry!  The bark was still on pretty solid, so I figured I’d at least try to do something with them.  My initial thought was to cut them into strips, then laminate them together for some kind of bottle stopper.  I considered going back into mini-bird house production mode again, but didn’t really feel like making a bunch more of them.

Then I remembered the video of a guy making what has become known as a “river table”.  For those not familiar with a river table, it’s basically two slabs of some kind of lumber, still rough cut, with the bark left on. Both pieces are laid flat next to each other, with the bark edges facing each other, but a gap between the boards.  Dyed resin is then added to fill the crack between the two boards.  If done right, the final product can look like there’s a river running through the middle of the table.  This looks really great for “flat work”, but I wondered if that same process could be used on a round surface, like a bowl?

I made a mold out of cardboard, then cut the pieces of cherry to fit the mold.  Since the wood wasn’t thick enough or big enough to use a single piece of wood, I decided to stack more cherry on top of the pieces with bark, figuring the dyed resin would fill all the gaps and look pretty cool.  the goal was to try to make the bottom of the bowl look like the river part.

That was the plan, anyway.

Turns out, I’m not that good at thinking all the way through a project, especially when I’m really excited to see the final execution.  The part that was going to be the “river”, needed to be at the very, very bottom of the bowl, but I didn’t have pieces thick enough, so I added a solid piece of cherry to the base of the mold so there was room to make a tenon.  That ended up making the river part too high and it eventually got turned away.  I also ended up making the blank too high, so it ended up being more of a cylinder.  if I made a bowl it would be tiny, and with the cost of the resin, I didn’t want to just throw it all away or turn it all away.

What ended up was this box.  I really like the look of the blue, iridescent, coloring in the resin against the deep color of the cherry.  When I went to make the lid, I realized I hadn’t planned to leave enough material on the top to make a knob, so I ended up using one that I had laying around.  The silver color seems to go pretty well, but I’m not sure if the proportions are right for the overall size of the box.  Still, I think this ended up being an acceptable piece!