The merits of salvaging funky wood

[Dave Mount]

In another thread there was discussion of the merits of salvaging unsound wood, along with laments that people aren't posting enough work. This is a bowl from a couple years ago. Nominally a cherry burl, it had every problem in the book, cracks, voids, ants, rotten spots, bark inclusions. Lot of epoxy later, this. The feature here is the wood, not the turning -- the bowl is far too hunky as I was chicken to go much thinner because of the potential weakness in the wood. I decided not to chase down all the small surface voids and just leave some. . .still not sure that was the right course. Apologies for the terrible phone photography -- the side profile is distorted by fisheye.

A decidedly unsound piece of wood, but it draws a lot of interest.

Best,

Dave

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[Timothy Thorpe Allen]

I like it!

[John Hart]

Definitely a gorgeous piece made from gorgeous wood!!!
Here's one that was a rotten piece of cherry that I had to hatchet most of it away. And then after most of the big chunks flew off...I was left with this small 6 inch workable piece. Ended up being LOML's favorite.

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[robert baccus]

Love that piece--love it. My fav. type of wood. Very soft/weak, spalted woods can be tamed by a method I stumbled across decades ago. Forget screws and use a glueblock & thick CA to mount on the lathe.--you can hold a paper towel roll with it. Rough out the piece to 20% of the wood diameter. Using a black Vinyle yard bag, and a mix of any 2 part resin with hardenr, thinned with acetone to drippy--add the mix and piece and play shake & bake every few hours. over nite the piece will absorb the resin and harden. The soft pieces will really soak up the juice and the firn wood will not. Turning it will reveal all the wood looks like fresh strong wood. An old boat trick for rotten wood. Sands and finishes like fresh wood also. Even if you have holes the require additional resin work you will have a sound, safe piece to work on.

[Cliff Hill]

Robert -- Thanks for the tip on thinning epoxy. I am in the process of trying your method on a couple of spalted pecan bowls.

[Barry McFadden]

Great looking bowl!... I love turning wood like that...