First "Bowl" in 15-years

[John Tisdale]

This is my first bowl in over 15-years and I'm thinking the finish "just ain't right".
My direction has been large hollow-forms which have some things in common:

• Large pieces come from large logs which have an abundance of imperfections: piths, knots, checks/cracks, bark inclusions, bores, musket-balls, etc. - even rocks in root-ball.
• Learned early on that you can't turn past the problem. The choice is lot's of firewood or embrace the defect.
• An anomaly or feature differs from the surrounding grain and becomes an opening to be filled with a different material with a very different texture (epoxy, putty, etc.) - for me, leaving "worm-dirt" is not an option.
• There are limitations: it's both difficult and unattractive, as well as problematic, to fill a large span - sometimes better to create an opening
• The beauty of a barrier/sealer/clearcoat/rubbed finish is that the anomalies "largely" go away - those that stand-out add to the piece
• The problem of a barrier/sealer/clearcoat/rubbed finish is it doesn't look that great on "functional" pieces - imagine your chest-of-drawers, dining table, and furniture with a show-car finish - in my mind, same with wood bowls

The pictured piece started life as a hollow-form and with one little slip, voila, a bowl. With the time invested, and as I'm a "one trick pony", I used my normal finish regiment which was time-consuming in a concave surface. After lots of hours of difficult sanding/rubbing, here's what I got. Not sure I like it, but as the saying goes, "it is what it is".

 

[Alan Weinberg]

Good job keeping that together!

 

[Dean Center]

If I understand correctly, John, you're saying you don't think the shiny finish is a good fit for this functional piece? Exactly what function did you have in mind--maybe a colander?