The club I’m in has a “president’s challenge” that runs for two months, then a new one starts. The intent is to incent members to create something that’s outside of their comfort zone. For March and April, the challenge is to “color it”, since many of the members only make things that are “brown and round”. The idea is that the finished product shouldn’t have any visible brown wood on it, or very little.

The current president is away from the club for a bit, so I’ve been asked to fill in. I figure if I’m going to be the acting president, I should be participating in the challenges. Not having a shop is a serious obstacle toward making things, but there are ways around everything. When I bought my new lather (which is my “forever lathe”, meaning I will never have to buy another lathe, since this one will do everything I can imagine doing) the guy I got it from threw in a couple of bowl blanks. One had a distinctive grain pattern that I thought was sycamore, but found out later it was elm. Thanks (again) to Bob, my friend and mentor, the bowl blank was quickly finished into a simple bowl. The inside of the bowl had a very distinctive grain pattern, but the outside wasn’t nearly as striking.

For the inside, I used a blue aniline dye to meet the challenge requirements. The bad thing about dying wood, is any blemish in the wood, be it tool marks or sanding marks, will be accentuated. EVERY mistake I had made in turning was now a glaring error. I had to re-sand all of the bad spots, then apply another coat of dye.

For the outside, I started applying the blue aniline dye, but quickly quit because it looked horrible. The end grain portion looked almost black, and the side grain didn’t take the stain very well at all, making it look like there was a vertical stripe on the outside. NOT the look I was going for. To cover the mistake, the only solution was paint. I decided to do the water marbling (aka hydro dipping) technique with silver and gold metallic spray paint, but control things so that none of the paint got on the inside of the bowl. The paint, however, decided that it was going to do whatever it wanted! I’d also forgotten that metallic paint doesn’t act the same as regular enamel spray paint and can get pretty clumpy. When I dipped it, I was left with a real clumpy finish and big globs of paint that had floated into the inside of the bowl. Great! More sanding! Mostly out of frustration, I decided to dip it again, only this time encourage it to be as gloppy as possible. When it came out of the water, the outside was covered with globs of paint that looked like snot. I patted it down with a wet paper towel, which left a textured finish, which I kinda liked.

More sanding on the inside to remove the wayward globs, then more dying to even out the newly sanded parts, and more turning to remove the tenon from the bottom. This is what I came up with. Not sure if I love it or hate it, but at least I have an entry in the challenge completed. Please forgive the low quality pictures, I’m still working on that…