Balls

Nice balls, my sphere bowl runneth over. My avatar bowl is 16x11 oval and now is full to overflowing. I either need to take a new pic, turn a bigger bowl or quit turning spheres... Ok, option three is out...
Textured sphere is interesting, care to elaborate?

Thanks. Turning spheres is fun, every once in a while I take some scraps from laminating or other odd pieces and turn a couple balls. I’ve experimented with a few different things (hollowing out, wire burning, various textures) but my two favorites in that bowl are the small walnut one on the right that I just tooled the surface with a carving chisel when turned (took a long time) and the top one that’s mostly turning air.

I made the top ball years ago as a challenge event with the MN Woodturners group I was a part of. The challenge was to do some offset turning. I glued a board of walnut to a maple board and turned rings through each side on different centers resulting in two cross hatched layers held together by each other. Then I cut that into quarters and stack glued the quarters into a cube of 8 layers of alternating walnut and maple arcs. Then the fun began of turning this matrix into a “sphere”. It was a lot of fun, and provided a very interesting piece.