Slightly spalted and figured Silver Maple bowl

[Leo Van Der Loo]

While I’m at it, I might as well show another one of my turnings, it is a Silver Maple bowl with some nice ripple figure and a bit of spalting in it.

Made from a piece of Silver Maple that the London City Utility and parks dept. had cut down along one of the downtown roads, and even with the grumbling of the boss and having some good clothes on, it could not stop me from picking at least one piece up and load it into the Expedition :D.

In the meantime, it’s been a while, as I did rough turn it quickly to prevent the staining of the wood, it has dried and just sat waiting for me for some years already, for me to come and return it.

Returned it better than a month ago and finished it, so here it is :D.

All comments are welcome as always :).

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[daryl moses]

very nice Leo. Just enough spalt to make it interesting.

[Louis Harvill]

All it needs is a chef salad. Very pretty again.

[Mark Greenbaum]

I see that you've left a bit of the pith in the rims (picture #4) and wonder if that's going to cause a problem later on. I have a bad habit of doing that to conserve depth, and it bites me later with warpage and cracking. Please help me understand this so I can make better objects. Thanks, and it's very pretty as usual Leo.

[Leo Van Der Loo]

very nice Leo. Just enough spalt to make it interesting.

Thanks for looking and commenting Daryl :D

[Leo Van Der Loo]

All it needs is a chef salad. Very pretty again.

Thank you for taking the time to comment Louis :)

[Leo Van Der Loo]

I see that you've left a bit of the pith in the rims (picture #4) and wonder if that's going to cause a problem later on. I have a bad habit of doing that to conserve depth, and it bites me later with warpage and cracking. Please help me understand this so I can make better objects. Thanks, and it's very pretty as usual Leo.

Thanks Mark, I’m not that close to the center Mark, but, and here is my experience about this, it is very very important to start with fresh wood with absolute NO splits anywhere, on the ends or in the pith or anywhere if you want to keep it split free, (splits never go away and usually get worse) the other thing is to give the wood the time to get rid of the tension within the wood, so a slow drying is the answer, not the DNA.

Now if you have a fresh log and there is one split already (happens often enough) cut in the direction of the split, so it’s gone, then process and rough turn the wood like "right now”, don’t wait till next week and if you aren’t able to turn it right now, get it sealed, and that gives you probably a few days respite.

Now I can claim all kinds of things of course, so I will ad a couple of pictures of pieces I have turned years ago that we use ourselves here, and also one that was without a split but I did expect it to open up later, so when I had a couple come in and liked that bowl, I told them it would probably split and I rather not sell it to them, so yes later when it started to split, I took it and stitched it with a brass wire, as you can see.

Of course we are working with different woods, and not all wood is alike some are so easy to keep from splitting that whole piths can be in and stay whole, other I use CA to fill the grain as much as I can get into it while it is still wet, it does minimize the shrinking because of the CA in the pith or knot, however with knots I can’t win them all yet ;) :)

The first one is a Apple bowl we use for our bread and has been used since 2001, made from a tree that had been tortured with bark missing and wind-shake, a small nail bent over with some string still on it overgrown and spot burls on it, we like the look of it, this is a recent picture, the next one is a large 17” Maple bowl with thin walls and older that the Apple bowl, this is a film picture that I copied, we have two nearly identical ones, and LOML has been using these for better than 20 years though one has an easy life sitting on an antique fancy cast iron plant stand that she got from an old english lady (client of her) that had brought it with her from England during WWII
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The next two are occasional use bowls, the first has two pits in the bowl itself, a crotch with bark inclusion made in 2004 and still the same, the other is a White Ash bowl that I finish turned in 2014 after it had sat for several years, both are nice center piece bowl and are used and without any splits.
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Now here is the Black Walnut bowl that surprised me when I turned the inside, where the pith of a branch ran into the wood at about the same angle as I had turned the outside, I did expect that the bowl would split there and it did about a year or so later, I did the brass wire save, all I could think of as how to save it :confused: :o
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