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- Feb 28, 2021
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- Roulette, PA
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- www.reallyruralwoodworks.com
Short Story: I am looking for opinions on this (new to me, unusual) bowl form I ended up with on the lathe.
Long story: I am one of those that feels like the wood will decide what it wants to be. Sometimes I will grab a piece of what, for all intents and purposes, should be firewood. This piece was FOG birch (ended up in our yard after a flood, water logged and punky) crotch, I chainsawed it in half down the pit avoiding a huge crack and one side of it turned out into a nice box. This piece (with the big chunk cracked out of it already) I just left laying around thinking I'd toss it, but today I decided to just stick it between centers and see what happens. I was able to turn away enough to get a reasonable tenon, so I started doing what I sometimes do: I don't start with any form in mind, I just touch the gouge to the wood, and go by feel, following path of least resistance, just feeling where the gouge wanted to go in the wood, I ended up with that outside form with a slight cove on the side and then the gouge wanted to stop at what ended up being the rim, so I let it, and again just followed along with what it felt like the wood wanted to do, then reversed it and cut out the inside to a consistent thickness, stopping once I had the form what seemed to be "complete" - I could probably continue to just follow the shape and get it down to , oh, 5/16 or 3/8 thickness. However, I just felt kind of "wishy washy" about the form itself, It looked a little odd, unusual, to me, and I thought I'd toss it up here and see what y'all thought of it. I didn't do any sanding at all, (and of course that punky wood would never really clean up without stabilizing, I can actually carve it with a fingernail) and I can see I caught some of the flame of the crotch wood (too bad it's so punky I think it would come out quite pretty if I wanted to put the time into it) Also note: the missing chunk in the rim is where the wood had originally split away from the log, It didn't "just happen" - I turned it with it already there. - Likewise with the "knothole" chunk missing.
So, any thoughts on what to me is a somewhat unusual form (for a bowl)?
Long story: I am one of those that feels like the wood will decide what it wants to be. Sometimes I will grab a piece of what, for all intents and purposes, should be firewood. This piece was FOG birch (ended up in our yard after a flood, water logged and punky) crotch, I chainsawed it in half down the pit avoiding a huge crack and one side of it turned out into a nice box. This piece (with the big chunk cracked out of it already) I just left laying around thinking I'd toss it, but today I decided to just stick it between centers and see what happens. I was able to turn away enough to get a reasonable tenon, so I started doing what I sometimes do: I don't start with any form in mind, I just touch the gouge to the wood, and go by feel, following path of least resistance, just feeling where the gouge wanted to go in the wood, I ended up with that outside form with a slight cove on the side and then the gouge wanted to stop at what ended up being the rim, so I let it, and again just followed along with what it felt like the wood wanted to do, then reversed it and cut out the inside to a consistent thickness, stopping once I had the form what seemed to be "complete" - I could probably continue to just follow the shape and get it down to , oh, 5/16 or 3/8 thickness. However, I just felt kind of "wishy washy" about the form itself, It looked a little odd, unusual, to me, and I thought I'd toss it up here and see what y'all thought of it. I didn't do any sanding at all, (and of course that punky wood would never really clean up without stabilizing, I can actually carve it with a fingernail) and I can see I caught some of the flame of the crotch wood (too bad it's so punky I think it would come out quite pretty if I wanted to put the time into it) Also note: the missing chunk in the rim is where the wood had originally split away from the log, It didn't "just happen" - I turned it with it already there. - Likewise with the "knothole" chunk missing.
So, any thoughts on what to me is a somewhat unusual form (for a bowl)?