The Bischofia wedding bowl continued and It's the 600th Blog Posting!!

Hello Everyone,

I'm back in the wood shop and raring to go. Let's get to work on the bischofia bowl:

Recap: several weeks ago I began a salad bowl out of bischofia wood for a couple of dear friends who are getting married this October. The initial turn went well but as the wood was green it had to be dried before progressing so I placed it in a cardboard box with dry wood shavings, closed it up and left it for about 3 weeks:

Here it is on the lathe. You can easily tell that the bowl has gone from being a circle to an oval shaped block and that happens when a bowl blank dries. You have to leave enough wood so the bowl blank can be re-turned back into a round shape and I did just that. You can see how thick the walls of the bowl are:

I've drawn some lines on the rim-this shows how very distorted the bowl has become:

And so I picked up a gouge and proceeded to turn the exterior into a round shape:

This is the exterior after about 25 minutes of turning. It's round again:

Now for the inside. Bowls are actually two semi spheres in one-the exterior is one sphere and the interior is a second sphere. Those two surfaces should ideally be equidistant from one another for a perfectly shaped bowl to result. By turning the inside, I'll wind up doing exactly that:

And here is the bowl about 30 minutes later. The walls of the bowl are an even thickness all the way around and underneath:

And here it is off the lathe. It's a nice size and the color is really pretty:

Here is a second photo with some rocks inside so you can get a sense of the depth of the bowl:

Well, I'm quite pleased with myself. Now the wood seems to have a little bit of moisture still in it so it's going back in the dry box for a week or so. When it comes out I'll re-check it for roundness and finish the surface. Stay tuned for that.

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Holy cow this is the 600th blog posting! When I began the blog 4 years ago I didn't think about how long the blog would go on or how many postings I would eventually get to and I guess I'm not surprised that I've reached this point. I love to talk about wood working and it's a real joy to share that with all of you. So stay tuned everyone, I still have a lot to chat about!

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Now next I have the urn to finish so I'm going to grab a cup of tea and then go back down to the wood shop and work on that.

VW