Cleaning up the shop is like your own private little hunt for buried treasure.  Somewhere, under the half completed projects, used up sandpaper disks, notebooks holding random scribbles written on them and the cast off bits left over from other projects, there’s a prize.  Could be a tool you had misplaced a long time ago, that bottle of dye you swore you had laying around somewhere, or the missing screw that had hit the floor and rolled.  Generally speaking, the bigger the pile you tear into, the bigger the treasure buried underneath.

When I moved the jointer out of the way so I could vacuum behind it, I found a half log of white oak that I had forgotten about.  My guess is it had been there at least two years and had developed a pretty sizeable crack that would need to be dealt with.  I cut a blank out of it, added some CA glue to the crack to make it more stable, then chucked it up to see what it could be.

As the outside of the bowl was being shaped, I kept seeing these weird color lines as the lathe was spinning.  For white oak, that’s not usually how the wood looks in motion, so I figured I must not be making a clean cut and took another pass, making sure to go slow and rub the bevel of the tool.  No change whatsoever!  I turned the lathe off and looked at the wood and that’s when I saw how different this piece of wood was from the other white oak I’ve turned.  Half of the log must have been starting to spalt, but hadn’t gotten very far in the process, leaving this weird, multi-colored look in the wood.  Nice!

Another hour of turning and what seemed like a solid day of sanding and this is the final product.  Looks like the treasure hunt really payed off!  Right now, it just has the Hampshire grit polish applied, so I’ll need to go back over the top with something more durable.  I’m torn between using a wipe on poly or lacquer that will give it more shine, or a matte finish that will leave the color as it is.