This bit of hickory was quite the challenge! To start with, it was extremely hard, so everything I did meant a lot of patience (and eventually a lot of sanding). A bit of pith that was completely separating eventually had to be chiseled off (I was afraid I'd catch it in the face otherwise). I originally thought I'd fill the spot with epoxy, but after using a dremel to clean up the edge, I decided I liked the way it looked. At the time, it had a hooked edge -- that eventually snapped off, but not before I managed to catch my thumb on it (ouch!). I was very lucky in that I had just turned the lathe off and the piece was slowing down. At the speed it had been running, I could have at least laid my thumb completely open (if not amputated a bit of it).
Anyway, I almost went through the bottom, so the top is actually about twice as thick as the rest of the bowl, but by the time I realized that, I couldn't go back and fix the problem. I had it so thin, in fact, that I cracked the bottom when I reversed it to turn off the tenon. You can't see the crack here, but knowing it's there bugs me. I definitely need to get more practice in!
Finish is TY Fine Furniture Food Grade Wood Finish (http://www.tyfinefurniture.com/products/foodgradefinish) which I got at our last club meeting. It was introduced to the club by Mike Sorge and I thought I'd give it a try. It smells wonderful and dries incredibly fast for an oil. Sheen is very similar to what you can get from boiled linseed oil, but is supposed to be free of all the nasty driers and artificial chemicals found in BLO. Overall, I'm impressed. I don't think it will replace walnut oil for me, but it does provide a nice compromise for an all-natural finish that doesn't take long to cure (as much as I like walnut oil, in some woods like maple, it seems to take forever to cure to the touch).
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