The Scrap Wood Project, continues/The pine yarn bowl-The Great Speckled Bowl

Hello Everyone,

Well, it's continuing to get colder and colder here and with the wind, our beautiful leaves are disappearing. I went out for a walk this morning and it was brisk outside. Snow will be here soon.

Back to the scrap wood bowl. I've begun finishing it. I previously applied a wood sealer to the surface and then a natural pine stain in order to deepen the pine color. I got into a discussion with the future owner of the bowl over the application of a mahogany colored wood stain, which I wasn't too keen on. She loves the color red ( I don't blame her, it's my favorite color too) and I wanted to accommodate that to the extent that I could so instead of applying a solid layer of stain, I elected to used two colors of wood stain and to sponge it on the surface.

Sponge painting is a common craft technique and it's easy to find images on the Internet of surfaces that have been painted this way using paint. I never could find anything about using wood stain instead so this was uncharted territory. I wanted to use wood stain so the pine color would show through a little in the hope that this would dampen the intensity of the red stains and not overwhelm the piece. I also wanted to use a second color to help add more detail to the surface. My goal then was to color a section of the bowl with three colors: a claret red, a cognac colored brown, and the native yellow of the wood.

I purchased two stains in claret and cognac by Varathane. Their claret stain is akin to a cardinal red and the cognac is a medium reddish brown. And I also got a very rough piece of a sea sponge for this project.

Here are today's photos:

Here is the bowl ready to go with all the stuff I bought:

I spent several minutes masking off the portions of the bowl that I did not want stained with blue painter's tape. I'm going to stain a wide area that includes the rim:

All taped up and ready to go:

I shook the cans to mix them well and then just lightly dipped a corner of the sponge into the stain and then applied it gently to the surface of this scrap pine board. This is the cognac colored stain:

In this photo on the left hand side you can see the claret colored stain. In the right hand side you can see the two colors overlapping one another.

Ok, moment of truth-should I stain or not?

Press On! Here is the bowl with the claret stain only. The stain is down the sides and on the top edge of the rim:

And here is the finish photo with the claret stain, the cognac stain, with a little bit of unstained pine showing through:

Now I'm going to let this dry for the next 2 days and then remove the tape and take a look at it. If it comes out looking positively horrid, then I can put the bowl back on the lathe and remove it (ahhh, the magic of wood turning!). Probably I'll finish the bowl at that point and then sit and look at it for a while.


Stay tuned, we're not done!

VW