For my birthday this year, I treated myself to a 5 day, 100% online, woodturning symposium. It was put on by a group called Woodturners Worldwide and it was awesome! There were live demonstrations, delivered via a Zoom-like application, prerecorded demos followed by live Q&A from the presenters over the Zoom-like interface, self led small group discussions, something close to speed dating where members could talk to each other (at random) for small amounts of time, and one whole day of short, prerecorded demonstrations. As far as birthday presents you give yourself, this was right up there with the best!
One of the prerecorded demos was only 6 minutes long. It was a guy named Richard Kennedy, who took a bowl, carved a tree into the side of it, leaving it to sit on it’s side and become something MUCH prettier than just a common bowl. This is the piece that he made in the demo:
Somewhere in the 6 minute video, he mentioned that there was a LOT of repetition that he skipped. I also remember him saying something about having to carve both the front and the back, even though he only showed steps to make the back and there was a blurb dropped almost like an afterthought about specific bits that he used for the different parts.
I figured I’d give it a try and made a quick cherry bowl that looked like it was roughly the same size and shape as they one he had. I figured all that “stuff” he cut out of the video couldn’t be much time, because the bowl was pretty small.
Five hours into the project, as my hand was cramping from all the power carving I’d been doing on the outside of the bowl, and I started to think some really nasty things about Mr. Kennedy! When I took a break to let my hand return to functioning status, I looked the piece over and realized that carving the inside of the bowl was going to be at least twice as difficult, because the curvature of the bowl made it nearly impossible to get the carving tool to the wood at an angle that would work. I stopped thinking about Mr. Kennedy and openly cursed him. Repeatedly! I should have thrown the bowl into the fire pit right there and then, but I already had too many hours into the piece to quit. I decided to put everything away for the day and open a cold beer. Strictly a medicinal move, since the cold would be good for my hand. After day 1, it looked like this, at least on the outside.
The next day, I started in again, once the sun had come up and and I was sure the neighbors wouldn’t complain about something sounding like a dental drill coming from next door. This time, though, I made sure to listen to a podcast that had hour long episodes to keep my mind from straying past my hatred of Mr. Kennedy and going straight to his parents who had spawned this devil. It worked, but 6 hours later my son came to see if I was ok and to see what his options were for lunch. I was more than ok, I was done!
Since I realized that my offering was going to be a “practice piece” at best, I decided to see if I could salvage it by adding color. Seemed like a good idea at the time, but in hindsight, it was a huge mistake. I used india inks, thinking they would soak into the newly carved, open grain, filling in all the inside edges of the piercings. Well, they don’t, and getting the insides of all those little tiny holes colored so they don’t stand out took a lot more time than I thought. I used multiple shades of green to try to break it up, but I’m not sure that was effective and the overall look really wasn’t any batter than had I just left it alone. The colors were WAY too bright for what I was going for and gave it an almost cartoon look. I reasoned the colors would dull when I put a finish on, but then I started to wonder how to put a finish on a piece like this? By the time you got a can to spray inside all those little holes, there’d be globs of finish running all over the rest of the piece. Mr. Kennedy hadn’t covered that in the 6 minute video. My answer was to dip the entire piece in boiled lindseed oil, like we did with wood carvings back before I took up turning. Sure, it would add a week to the overall process to let the BLO fully cure, but at least there would be complete coverage.
As I looked over my finished piece, I had a series of realizations. I realized the reason Mr. Kennedy didn’t tell everyone how much actual time and effort it took to make one of these was because if he did, no one would ever start the project. I also realized that Mr. Kennedy is so skilled in how he does the power carving, that even in a 6 minute video, he was able to do the right things, in the right way, with the right tools and get the desired result the first time. Eventually, coupled with the level of pain in my hand decreasing, I realized that the work Richard had done really was something to aspire to and I was being unrealistic to think I could come anywhere near his final product on my first shot. Things don’t look easy because they are, things look easy because of the skill of the person doing it.
Here’s the result of my final effort. Not the worst thing to come out of the shop by far, but certainly not something that’s going to be a favorite piece.
