I started turning bowls in the late fall of 2008.....only occasionally. Up to that time I had turned a few table legs and some small spindle work........that was why I got my first lathe. This is the 3rd bowl I ever turned....did not finish it back then...........I found out with the abundance of catches and what not, that I did not have the proper tools..........at that time, not even a chuck, or a bowl gouge..........I left it thick because it had a lot of windshake cracks in it, and I was just very frustrated back then.........it has been sitting in my shop all this time.........many times I almost threw it in the wood stove, but just could not bring myself to do it.....thinking .........I might try to fix this someday, even though it is really cracked a lot.
Yesterday I saw it again........last night in my semi-sleep state, it came to my head.......beckoning me to do something with it. The form was pretty creative for a novice turner of bowls, who had no tools except spindle gouge and skew at the time, and well, I found out pretty quickly that I needed different tools to make this form work.
I have since acquired numerous tools for my turning arsenal, and some chucks [and a much better lathe for that matter] The shape required an oland style tool, a gooseneck scraper, and some work with a bowl gouge to get it pretty uniform at 1/4 inch thick.
I have reached my limit with this......even though the finish is not perfect by any means. The many cracks from being a severely windshaken tree, makes me not want to do anything else with it to try to get it better.....it can only go so far in that direction.
It has been one of my nemesis' and even though I was a novice at bowl forms, it still haunted me every time I went to the shop! Today, I returned to the battle, and I feel like I won the victory with this one....
This form is 7.5 inches wide and 3.75 tall, and the wood is black walnut. Comments welcome!
