Walnut burl bowl and a question about piercing

[Stephen Saar]

Made this bowl for my girl friend who I'm about to go see in Italy. Didn't turn out quite as well as I would have liked, but luckily mother nature was kind and made a gorgeous piece of wood that hides some of my work flaws.

On an earlier piece I made a mista.... I had design inspiration and decided to make a pierced bowl, thinking to myself, it can't possibly be that hard :eek: . Long story short I had a bowl with a bunch of holes in it that looked horrible. So I made this bowl instead. My question is: Does anyone have any pointers on how to make a decent looking pierced vessel/bowl? My idea of trying to put a bunch of holes in it did not look very good. I think part of it is making the holes different shapes and sizes instead of just a bunch of round holes, and I think on my bowl the walls were too thick as well (sorry don't have any pictures of the bowl). But I figured I would get the opinions of the experts.

Thanks.

Ohh, if you don't see me respond, it's most likely because I am in Italy. So I'm not being rude, just won't have ready access to the internet.;)

-Stephen

[John Keeton]

I have no experience with piercing, but I would suggest a good starting place would be the work of Wally Dickerman. His interview with SMC is here (http://www.sawmillcreek.org/showthread.php?t=139887&page=3). The interview contains some pics, as well as some links that may be helpful.

Wally's work is top of the line, and he has done some beautiful piercings. There are some others that do that as well, and a search of SMC should produce some nice examples.