Wild-edged Oak Bowl

[Mark]

This bowl is from that same log of Garry Oak I've been playin' with for a few weeks. This one got rough-turned, then Polycryl'd, then neglected for a number of weeks.


The cracks are filled with a paste of used coffee grounds and marine epoxy.


It is no-where near round, and the wall thickness varies from knife thin to 1/4". Nonetheless, I got a bowl with character out of the effort. That edge sure is scary flyin' around while hollowing. I didn't even attempt to sand it on the lathe, opting instead for a Guenevere form sander on my drill motor.


So far, it's dressed in BLO only. It's about 4 1/2" tall and 8" round.

Comments welcome.

Thanks,
Mark

[sawduster]

Cool looking vessel!

Bet that was a real finger buster when sanding. ;D

[deepsplinter]

Too cool!!

It looks to me like you made something beautiful out of an old junk piece of firewood.

Is some like that (outa balance) a real bitch to work on?

[dicklaxt]

Markmis that a natural edge or did you turn it and the shape is the outcome?

Nice looking

dick

[Ruffnek]

That's an unusual and very artsy piece, Mark. Is the bottom flat, slightly concave or what?

That sucker must have been warping as you turned it to get the thin/thick edge like that. You did good to stay with it.

[Doug B]

That is really wild Mark. I can understand why you opted not to sand while on the lathe

[Mark]

Wow, thanks for all the comments and curiosity. I'll attempt to cover the questions for you.

Yep, out of balance means low speed, and an occasional re-positioning of the lathe to where it had been previously. But, as the bulk of the wood was removed, it got better. The out of balance condition is hardly an issue, compared to the issues that present themselves with the interrupted cut. Every rotation, the tool is only cutting part-time, and that other fraction of a second it isn't cutting, it tends to go looking for more wood. So, when the edge comes around again, it knocks into the tool. To lessen the amount of time the tool goes wandering in the air, it helps to turn up the rpm, but then you run into balance issues quickly.

I attempted only briefly, sanding with a foam block that kept my hand out of the strike zone, and it was not going to work. Put some nice gouges in the foam, and glad it wasn't my fingers. It became obvious quickly that this one was going to be sanded off-lathe.

Imagine bark all the way around the rim, and you can envision how this was oriented in the tree. The pith was just beyond the base of the bowl in photo #2, and much farther under the base in photo #3. I sort of cocked the raw blank, so that the base of the bowl was not parallel to the center of the log. The bark hung on for awhile, but as the wood dried, it started coming off. I couldn't keep up with it to glue it back on, so decided to just remove it all rather than have it flying off at random times.

The bottom is like the underside of a large dinner plate, concave in the center area, and gradually curving upwards towards the outside. When sitting on a flat surface, the bottom edge is about 1/4" above the surface it's on.



Thanks for the comments and interest guys. I enjoy seeing your stuff and reading about how you've made yours as well. I've learned alot from that.

Mark