Anyways, I decided it would be cool to make a bowl for them, as sort of a thank you. Rather than giving it to them in person, though, I devised a scheme, which everyone helped out on. I decided to plant the bowl somewhere while we were getting ready to leave, in hopes they wouldn't find it until we were all gone, so it would be a surprise.
Fun, yeah?
It was incredibly hard to keep it hidden until the last moment when I put it onto their coffee table, at which point, it was incredibly hard to hide my excitement. I was incredibly giddy riding away.
Anyways, the bowl:
When I started finishing the bowl, I did not like it. I thought the wood rot cavities combined with the bold grain made it too busy looking and overwhelming. My sister helped convince me to stick with it and finish it, and I figured if I still didn't like it, I'd bring another bowl turned from a similar piece of wood with less rot, and let everyone else decide. But once I put the gloss finish on it, all my reservations disappeared. I liked it, and was sure everyone else would, too. And they did.
The bowl is turned from my last piece of Spanish Cedar lumber, and was the piece I was most scared of turning, because it had so many voids in it from the rot. As such, the inside of the bowl isn't sanded as well as I usually try to do, and still has some turning lines in it. It is hard to tell, but the rim is interrupted in two spots by a long void, which made sanding even more difficult. It is 7 1/8 inches in diameter by 1 3/4 inches tall, finished with danish oil with a polyurethane gloss topcoat.
Lesson being: Don't stop working on something because you don't like it yet. Sometimes, it ends up being one of your favorite pieces by the time you're done.
No comments:
Post a Comment