Look what happened to my ort bowl....

[Michael Stafford]

I wonder if some pieces of wood are predestined to become something that most would recognize as a hollow form. Well this piece of hackberry certainly tried to become a hollow form despite the fact that I don't have the tools or the knowledge to turn hollow forms.

My buddy Mark Cothren sent me two sticks of hackberry a while back. One stick was mostly sapwood and had some spalting. It turned okay but was real prone to tear out. The other stick had the nice dark coloring so typical of some hackberry but decided to split almost immediately after I unpacked it. I sawed it up trying to get rid of the cracks and threw the saved pieces into my scrap bin figuring that they would never be used.

I have been turning ort bowls for my wife. So I fished out a piece of Mark's hackberry and chucked it up. I had a nice ort bowl going and I was distracted for a minute and looked away and when I looked back it had taken on the semi-enclosed hollow form shape. When I brought it in the house my wife said, "That is getting awfully close to a hollow form." I told her that she was mistaken that since I have no tools for turning hollow forms and no knowledge how to turn hollow forms this could not possibly be a hollow form.
She was skeptical but I told her the guys would know that this is just an unusually shaped ort bowl.

So, in Mark Cothren's hackberry is my little ort bowl 1 3/4" tall and 2 3/4" in diameter. Thin and light as can be......;)

[Christopher K. Hartley]

I think you're going to start a new fad here, Ort...Ort!! Great looking Ort something or other. Keep it up!:)

[Jim Ketron]

Oh yea Nice hollow form Mike!;)
Beautiful!

[Henry C. Gernhardt, III]

Big Mike, you make me think of your signature line. For neither having the tools nor the knowledge, you sure are doing a great job! That's yet another beautiful piece.

[Henry C. Gernhardt, III]

Big Mike, you make me think of your signature line. For neither having the tools nor the knowledge, you sure are doing a great job! That's yet another beautiful piece.

[Dick Parr]

Very nice Mike.

[Bernie Weishapl]

Beautiful Big Mike. As always nice form and finish.

[Ernie Nyvall]

I like the way you rolled the lip of that bowl in so far.:D Nother nice piece Big Mike.

Ernie

[Corey Hallagan]

Looks like an HF to me! Nice work, it looks great!

Corey

[Lee DeRaud]

When I brought it in the house my wife said, "That is getting awfully close to a hollow form." I told her that she was mistaken that since I have no tools for turning hollow forms and no knowledge how to turn hollow forms this could not possibly be a hollow form.Base is smaller than the hole: it's an "openform". Or at least you can stick to that story until you get the tools to do "hollowforms"...that's my plan, anyway.:cool:

[Dennis Peacock]

Very pretty Big Mike!!! Very nice HOLLOW FORM!!!!!! ;) :D

[Mark Cothren]

Man, that is just super! What a beautiful piece of wood God made for me to send to you...;)

None of the Hackberry I've turned has been that pretty... you done good on yet another hollow form, Big Mike.

[John Miliunas]

Mike, I visited a pretty high-end artisan gallery recently and a turner had a bunch of stuff displayed there. A pretty advanced turner, I might add. Funny, but there were a couple shelves of his work clearly marked as "Bowls",then a couple more shelves with some platters & smaller plates and finally, a shelf marked clearly as "Hollow Forms". Oddly enough, a couple of them, albeit a bit larger, had a striking resemblence to that beautiful Ort you have there! :eek: <?xml:namespace prefix = v ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:vml" /><v:stroke joinstyle="miter"></v:stroke><v:formulas><v:f eqn="if lineDrawn pixelLineWidth 0"></v:f><v:f eqn="sum @0 1 0"></v:f><v:f eqn="sum 0 0 @1"></v:f><v:f eqn="prod @2 1 2"></v:f><v:f eqn="prod @3 21600 pixelWidth"></v:f><v:f eqn="prod @3 21600 pixelHeight"></v:f><v:f eqn="sum @0 0 1"></v:f><v:f eqn="prod @6 1 2"></v:f><v:f eqn="prod @7 21600 pixelWidth"></v:f><v:f eqn="sum @8 21600 0"></v:f><v:f eqn="prod @7 21600 pixelHeight"></v:f><v:f eqn="sum @10 21600 0"></v:f></v:formulas><V:p:o Now, I'd be pretty comfortable telling this artisan something or two about computers, however I don't think it would sit real well with him when I inform him that he's mistakenly displaying bowls as HF's!!!! :eek: But, being the kind of guy I am, I guess when I do meet up with him, I'll give him the bad news. Wonder if the LOML will like being a widow??? :eek: :D :cool: <v:shape id=_x0000_i1028 style="WIDTH: 12pt; HEIGHT: 12pt" alt="0" type="#_x0000_t75"><v:imagedata o:href="http://www.sawmillcreek.org/images/smilies/biggrin.gif" src="file:///C:\DOCUME~1\JOHNMI~1\LOCALS~1\Temp\msohtml1\01\cli p_image002.gif"></v:imagedata></v:shape><v:shape id=_x0000_i1029 style="WIDTH: 12pt; HEIGHT: 12pt" alt="0" type="#_x0000_t75"><v:imagedata o:href="http://www.sawmillcreek.org/images/smilies/cool.gif" src="file:///C:\DOCUME~1\JOHNMI~1\LOCALS~1\Temp\msohtml1\01\cli p_image003.gif"></v:imagedata></v:shape>

[Jim Becker]

Orta do more of those, Mike! BTW, that hackberry is really interesting looking stuff...and the grain/figure is proportionally wonderful for something of this size. Nice!

[Curt Fuller]

Mike I really like these orts you're doing. But, you really ought to come up with a better name for them. "Ort" sounds like something you might go to the doctor to have removed from somewhere that the sun doesn't shine. Like "I had to have an ort burned off my keester".

Anyway, that's a really nice ort.

BTW, when do you figure you'll have crossed the line and have to start calling them hollow forms?

[Michael Stafford]

Thanks guys for all the nice comments.

Curt, ort is a real word and as Henry noted I have been cleaning out my ort bin to make ort bowls. I guess you are right about the name but this is what the needlepointing community calls them. A very genteel bunch of ladies call them ort bowls.

As far as calling them hollow forms...I don't do hollow forms. If I ever start I will be eating a lot of crow served up by Jim K., Travis S., Mark C., Dennis P., Dick P., Andy H., Keith B. etc. etc. ad infinitum......You see I made the statement that I will never do hollow forms therefore I cannot start.....:p :D

[Barbara Gill]

Orts are those little pieces of thread you cut off and need a place to put them. In Japanese embroidery here in the U.S. they are saved and sent back to the school in Atlanta. They are silk and can be re-used.

[Michael Gibbons]

IF YOU CAN'T STICK YOUR GRUBBY FINGERS INSIDE IT TO GRAB A PIECE OF CANDY, THE FORM IS HOLLOW!! Seriously, In the Detroit area we had some folks take old used tires and with a bit of elbow grease,turned the tire inside-out and made flower pots out of them. So that's what we got here, a Dual-Form turning:D .

[Michael Stafford]

Seriously, In the Detroit area we had some folks take old used tires and with a bit of elbow grease,turned the tire inside-out and made flower pots out of them.:D .

Michael, I fear the use of used tires as flower pots, flower bed border edging and tree rings is not confined to the Detroit area. Here we refer to it as redneck chic.............LOL LOL LOL LOL:p :D