Tiger Eye

[Mark Hubl]

I think everyone has had that piece that refused to stay in the burn bucket. This is one of mine. Some time ago a neighbor gave me a green walnut limb that had been blown down. I roughed a couple of pieces and put them aside. The little hollow form seemed nice, but when I came back to finish it the top had some cracks at the entry. I cut them back and the entry really got too large. Tossed the piece. Came back to it again, I really liked the cats eye shape that formed in the transition from sap wood to heart wood, so how about a collar. Well lost some of the curve trying to recover and add the collar. Since the collar was a tad on the BIG side I thought I would use an exaggerated finial as well. Wanted a finial that mimicked the shape of the blemish in the wood. Thought adding a twist would be a nice touch. The finial has some nice figure in it as well.


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[Dick Mahany]

Very clever save and a beautiful piece. I really lke the cat's eyefigure and the twisted finial accentuates it nicely. The finish is very nice. What did you use?

[Richard Madden]

Glad you hung in there with this piece. I like the cat's eye, and the finial is top notch!!

[Kathy Marshall]

Very nice save Mark! I like the spiral finial, the collar, the finish, the form and the cat's eye. Definitely too nice for the burn pile!

[Michelle Rich]

cool finial & very nice piece

[Thom Sturgill]

Good base form and the figure was way to cool to trash! Good save! And that is an inspired finial.

[Bernie Weishapl]

Really nice piece. Love the wood and finial.

[Jim Burr]

Sure am glad you saved it Mark...well worth the effort!

[John Beaver]

Nice job tying the finial to the details in the wood.

[Darren Jamieson]

Really like this one. If you ever have any more of those you want to throw on the burn pile I'd like to be the burn pile.

[Baxter Smith]

Nice job on the finial and a very neat package!

[Mark Hubl]

The finish is very nice. What did you use?

Dick, the finish is Minwax Antique Oil. Several coats and them a buff and wax.

Thanks to all for looking.

[Bob Bergstrom]

My eye was immediately taken to the finial. Then I caught the look of the eye. Not till I read your discription did I notice the collar. Even that still looks good. Great work as usual.

[Joe Meirhaeghe]

Mark, I have to go a little agiant the grain on this one. I've looked at this piece once a day for the last 3 days. Each time I get the same feeling. The form is really good, the wood is interesting, The finish looks great. However I just can't get past the finial. For me it seems to large overpowering and takes away from the form itself.
That said I like the design of the finial, perhaps on a larger vessel it would look more proportionate.

[Mark Hubl]

Joe, I think your observation and comment is spot on. I exaggerated the finial on purpose to make it more the focus of the piece. To that end I may have succeeded. To my own sensibilities, I have to agree with you that it is a bit much.

[Peter Blair]

Really like this Mark. Easy to see how you named it!
Do you have a professional do the photos of your work?
If not do you use Photoshop to make up the full pages?

[Mark Hubl]

Do you have a professional do the photos of your work?
If not do you use Photoshop to make up the full pages?

Thanks Peter. I have an old version of Powerpoint I use for the composite page. One can quickly drop a few images on a page, crop them and then save the page. PP lets you save the page as a jpeg. This is nice because it compresses it for upload. The negative is that the images loose some definition. Other presentation and editing software will also let you save or export pages in jpeg format. If you don't have PP and want to try something you could try OpenOffice it is free and pretty robust.