One of the pieces that I found was a chunk of wood that a friend had given me at least a year ago that at some point in the shuffling I’d stuffed in the box with the partially completed projects. It was a piece of oak, white oak I think, that looked like it might be a burl, but it was in such bad shape, my friend wasn’t sure how to even start making something out of it. There was a huge crack going through most of it that was lined with bark, but since the wood was so “twisted” looking, it was unclear if the crack was shallow or if the whole middle part of the blank was hollow. With defects like this in the wood, it suddenly becomes a crap shoot as to what the wood inside is like, because it could be completely rotten.

I started by cutting it mostly round, then cut the top off the bark part so I could see what I was dealing with. A little work with the air compressor and the best guess was that the inside wasn’t rotten, but it did have a significant crack/inclusion that ran pretty deep. I mixed up some resin, colored it with a red iridescent mica powder, and slowly poured it into the hole. It drank in the first four ounces of resin and I still couldn’t see how deep the hole went. Not a good sign! A couple days later, I fed it another 4 ounces of resin, but this time I could tell that the hole was nearly filled. Another couple ounces of resin and the crack was looking like it had been filled, so I figured I was good to go.

When I started turning the bowl, just getting the outside shape set, only to discover there were multiple holes inside the wood and the initial resin hadn’t filled all of them. That took be back to the resin table so I could fill in the missing bits.

After finishing the outside, it was on to the inside. My hope was that turning the inside of the bowl would be a nonevent, since all that resin must surely have make the blank solid. I also hope that Arabs and Jews can make peace somehow, that the rumored sequel to “The Craft” won’t suck, and that Tom Brady will put up “career worst” kind of numbers with the Buccaneer’s. Guess we don’t always get what we hope for. On the inside of the bowl, there were multiple voids in the wood that weren’t connected to the part I had already filled with the red resin. Back off the lathe and back to the resin table for another round of filling the gaps. Aa I was mixing the resin, I was talking to a daughter and in all honesty, picked up the wrong bottle of mica powder. Instead of being red like the rest of the bowl, I dropped in some irridized copper powder in by mistake, but I actually think it was a happy mistake, because I like the way to two colors look together.

After about a week of mixing little batches, pouring in it, waiting for it to cure, then starting with the next spot, it was back on the lathe. Below is the finished product. This is another project that will definitely be staying at home.