As I was working on the shop, unboxing box after box, after box, I found a box that was labeled “uncompleted projects, blanks, and misc.”. When I opened it, I wondered why I had ever packed most of it up in the first place. Many of the uncompleted projects were from at least 10 years ago and were projects that I had started before I had the skills to actually do them. Looking at them now, none were worth the time to attempt a salvage, so they were all burned.
The blanks, were a collection of mulberry rounds that came from my daughter’s house. Not sure how they got in the box, my guess is I had combined two boxes during the early part of the shuffle. The blanks had started to crack, so I wasn’t sure they would be of any use. I filled the cracks with CA glue and figured I put one on the lathe and see what I could do with it. I ended up turning a small bowl with a larger foot. Then things got out of hand. Again!
It looked too plain, so I put it back on the lathe and thinned it down so it could be pierced. After about 3-4 hours and some ibuprofen, I ended with this:
This was better, but the more I looked at it, the more I decided it needed a lid, so I took another one of the mulberry blanks that was even more cracked and made a lid. Having a plain lid on top of such an intricately pierced bowl looked really stupid, so I decided I needed to do some piercing. Because of the way the lid was turned, and since I was already having issues with losing feeling in my hand from all piercing, I decided NOT to pierce the whole lid. Here’s what it looked like after I had dipped both the bowl and the lid in boiled lindseed oil for a finish.
I knew the way the lid fit, I’d need some kind of handle. My options were a white ceramic knob, which would be easiest, or a finial of some kind. I found a ceramic knob, but it just looked wrong! After scrounging through the can full of scraps to burn, I found another piece of mulberry that would work for a finial. The final project actually turned out pretty good!
Not bad for some blanks that were literally stacked up next to the burn pile!