The Artful Turn-The Catalpa Bowl-finished and comments

Good Morning All,

Well, the weather has turned cold again and there was a massive snow storm in the Twin Cities last night, although thankfully we only got a very light dusting of snow. But it's good turning weather so I decided to go down to the wood shop and complete the catalpa bowl.

Here's today's photos and comments:

After looking at the bowl for several days I decided to flair out the side of the bowl a little more and remove that double rim inside the bowl that I worked so hard to preserve the other day. And to hollow it out more as well.

Here is the bowl after I've turned and flaired out the side somewhat. I think the edge of the wide band could be narrowed more but I'm going to stop here for now. I think this tends to draw the eye into the center of the exterior a little more and the flair makes it look a little less blocky:

Here is the interior of the bowl. The wall of the bowl at present is very thick. I think thinning the wall will improve the overall appearance of the bowl and it will also increase the interior volume of the bowl as well:

So I very carefully removed the inner wall and thinned the whole thing as well. I've also created a secondary structure inside of the bowl-sort of a plate within a bowl effect:

And here is the bowl after I've sanded it. I'm going to stop at this point and take it off the lathe and varnish it to see how it looks:

And here is the bowl at present with a layer of varnish in the inside and exterior of the bowl:

Comments:
The bowl over all isn't a bad design. It still looks rather blocky and squarish on the outside and I think the cure for that is to radically flair out the top band of the bowl more and to narrow the bottom band a little more as well.

I'm satisfied with the interior of the bowl at present but will think more about how to develop "plate withing a bowl" look.

Overall the concept of turning different surfaces onto a bowl's sides and interior walls is a good one. I'm going to see next if this concept will work on a wider, shallower bowl.

Stay tuned,
VW