5th Bowl - Ohia Lehua

Looks good to me! Especially for a "salvage" attempt. In general, most woodturning artists say to avoid straight lines and keep a continuous curve. However I'm not even sure that is a great rule.

It looks like you have a little bit of tearout that you tried to sand out. It's hard to tell from the picture. And it's also hard to make the perfect bowl. The yellow colored wood (sapwood?) in this bowl is attractive.

Thanks Jeff, I was modeling this after a nice blown glass vase my wife has. I wanted to see if I could keep the lines of that piece. It is pretty close, with the oh so minor exception of the top cracking off and it no longer being a vase of course. There was actually no tear out during the whole process. This wood seems to cut more as a coarse dust than shavings, but the end result with my Ellsworth Gouge was remarkably smooth. I was able to start sanding at 220 with no problems. Didn't have to linger longer than usual on the 220 before moving up. I did have to be careful about heat buildup though. On a test piece I found that if you linger too long and let heat build up on the sandpaper the wood will split, much faster than anything I have played with before.

You mentioned avoiding straight lines? Are you refering to the change in curve as it approaches the rim? I hope to try this shape one more time this weekend and will concentrate on that area. I hadn't spotted that flattening until you mentioned it.

The yellow wood isn't sapwood. It appears to be either a spalting in the wood or a natural color variation. It ran from pith to bark. This is the natural color of the wood by the way. The only finish I used was to sand it to 600, buff with tripoli and diamond, and then lightly buff it with carnuba. It came out so smooth and is such a hard wood it didn't seem to call for anything else. I tried some danish oil and tung oil on test pieces and they didn't add anything to the wood so I just stuck with a touch of wax.

Thanks for the feedback Jeff!! Really appreciate it!!

Dave

Dave - it all looks good to me. That's pretty cool that the yellow color is just part of the wood. I wouldn't get too hung up on avoiding flat spots. In this particular piece it's barely noticeable.

And like I said before that advice is primarily from the woodturning world. There is no scientific proof or studies from anyone which shows that pieces with continuous curves will outsell pieces with some semi-flat spots.

I like the finish. That is great that you didn't have to put any finish on it besides wax. If it seems to work out then why mess with it!