Category Archives: Bowls and Dishes

Natural edge bowl with pedestal

This piece of spalted wood came out of my pile and needed to be gone. I liked the figure but the light color was not what I wanted. I have brown dye which seldom gets used and I used that for something different. The inside is natural color. My wife really wanted me to do another natural edge bowl so this is what I did. The shape I was able to get out of that chunk needed a bit of enhancement. I first thought a tall decorative pedestal would look good but I ended up doing a short one out of walnut and gave it a coat of the same brown dye. I also picked out a lot of bug damage and filled with epoxy with black dye in it. Right now the bowl has a satin lacquer finish from a rattle can to seal the dye but it will be sprayed on my next spray lacquer day.

Sold at Oxford Artist Studio Tour

Glass lidded segmented container

I had not done a glass lidded turned container for a while and all the ones I had sold rather quickly. This pot was going to be another open segment like the last but blew apart on me. Rather than scrap it, I just put solid wood in between — alternating between coco bolo and maple to set off the main walnut segments. The bottom wasn’t looking too nice after multiple attempts to sand down there. As chance would have it, I had a 2″ diameter mirror that just fit. 

By the way, I will be displaying (and hopefully selling!) at the Oxford Studio Tour on September 6.

Shallow Locust Dish

photo-nov-26-1-23-34-pmI’ve had a slab of Locust that has been hanging around the shop for over 25 years. I had forgotten how gorgeous the grain is in this wood. The rings are Milliput – a 2 part epoxy putty. This particular color is actually make for repairing terracotta pottery. The bowl is quite heavy as I wanted a wide rim. 

Turning white

2016-08-24 16Since I have been turning a lot of black items I wanted to stretch a bit and do white. I had tried to achieve a transparent white in the past and was very disappointed so this time I went in a different direction. I got some white spray lacquer and used that. What i found was that certain areas of the wood wouldn’t take the lacquer which seemed odd. So this piece I ended up using spray paint. I did figure out that sealing the wood first with a coat of shellac solves the adhesion problem and have several other white projects in progress on the bench.

Turning ugly wood

2016-08-14 12I had a small piece of maple that just looked horrible and it had some checks in it. It is too hot for a fire these days so I decided to use it up. I also had a few pieces of cherry on my bench that needed to be moved out so I glued them on as a foot and a rim. after turning the shape I wanted I tried filling the checks with CA glue but that didn’t make the cracks look any better I decided to use black lacquer but to make sure they didn’t show up I spun two coats of CA on it to bridge any remnants of the cracks – fail. After spraying on the black the evidence was still there. That’s when I put the acrylic on it. The cracks still show but are really hard to find unless you are looking for them.

Turned bowl with glass lid

glassThis project was a rework of an older project from several years ago. It never really worked for me and has been in hiding but I pulled it out to clear out space and decided to go wild with it. I first ebonized it using black leather dye. The result is a nice leather texture on the black. Also the lid was rudimentary at best and it needed something a bit more dramatic to work with the black. The result is just wonderful with the glass. I also added a cherry knob to match the cherry rim left on the bowl itself.

Turning Green

DSCN1004I hadn’t done a green pot for a while so back to that this week. The bowl has really nice grain and wash just perfect for the green. I did do a lot of dark yellow highlights in it which makes a brownish color on the green. The lid is cherry (I have a lot of cherry boards). The spindle wanted to be large so it was. It is natural walnut with a touch of walnut oil to darken it up a bit.

Foray into finger painting

2016-06-24 10I hadn’t done this since elementary school (or maybe earlier than that) but this is the results of my finger painting experiment. The background is india ink and the painting was done with acrylics. The photos don’t do it justice as it just turned out splendidly.2016-06-24 2 I had just got a bottle of leather dye and wanted to try that so the inside has that applied. After drying I applied shellac to the inside and a coat of butcher block was. Everyone who has seen this is amazed. I did get the idea from Gary Lowe on youtube (thanks Gary!)

Turning a change dish

2016-06-12 13I still have a large Sapele board in stock and wanted to turn something from it. Sapele has a natural chatoyance to it that just pops out when finish is applied. I also got some black leather dye that I wanted to try on the rim. The flower motif was a perfect embellishment for this project. Dish is about 6″ in diameter with lacquer finish.

I wanted to get my new light box built to get better photos but got distracted on shop upgrades — building drawers, painting cabinets and painting the floor. The upgrades are almost done (round 1) so I can get back to that soon.