Siberian Elm Bowl Set

Vaughn McMillan

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This pair of bowls came from some local Siberian elm that my wife bird dogged for me a few blocks away from the house. I roughed these out back in May (here's the thread) and finished them a couple weeks ago. (They both still need buffing, but I'm in no rush, so I'm letting the finish sit for a while before I buff them.) I've been putting off taking photos of these because the mama bowl is too big for my photo tent. I finally decided to heck with it, I wanted to show them to someone.

The baby bowl ended up at 12 3/4" wide by 1 1/2" tall. Real simple form with just the figure in the wood doing the real work. This was a piece of crotch wood, but I didn't get the feathering centered very well, and it only showed up in the baby bowl. The finish is 3 or 4 coats of Formby's Tung Oil finish. I'll buff and wax it sometime between now and the next show.

Bowl 073 - 09 800.jpg Bowl 073 - 01 800.jpg Bowl 073 - 03 800.jpg

The mama bowl is 18" by 4". It's the biggest one I've done so far. These are obviously not gallery-quality photos, since the bowl is a bit too big for my backdrop. :doh: The pics will still get the idea across. (I really need a bigger backdrop. I have a 4' x 4' photo tent that I've never used because I don't have a good backdrop for it. Maybe I need to do the trick I've seen on SMC ages ago and just make some big gradient JPG files and get them printed on one of the wide format printers at Kinkos.) This one has the same finish as the little one. Oh yeah, the crackes were filled with black epoxy.

Bowl 073 - 06 800.jpg Bowl 073 - 07 800.jpg Bowl 073 - 05 800.jpg Bowl 073 - 04 800.jpg

And one shot of the happy family...

Bowl 073 - 10 800.jpg

I've got another pair about this size that are roughed out and dried. I'm just giving myself a bit of a break before tackling them. Once it dried, this wood dulled my tools faster than anything I remember turning, and even though the roughouts were very dry, the wood moved a lot from stress release as I finish turned it. I finish turned the outside of the big bowl one evening, and when I went back out to the shop the next night, there was over 3/4" of an inch in variation in the rim. I had planned to make it kind of chunky (a la Jeff Bower) :D but by the time I got the round again, the walls ended up about 3/8" to 1/2" thick. By then it was getting pretty flexible, and with all the cracks it had, I didn't get too heroic about perfect finishing cuts. I spent a lot of time with the 80 grit gouge to get them smooth, especially on the big one.

Now all I've gotta do is find someone who wants to buy a bowl that's too big to fit on a shelf. :rolleyes:

Comments and critiques are welcome, as usual.
 
looks good vaughn,, i got some feather in some walnut that someone needs to make use of:) the feathering doesnt go very deep does it?

Thanks, Larry. Yeah, the limited amount of feathering I've seen hasn't gone real deep. Sure is cool stuff when you can hit it and keep it.

How big is that piece of feathered chocolate that's wasting away at your place? Flat rate box or bigger? ;)
 
Very nice Vaughn. Makes no difference that the 80 grit gouge was used heavily. The result is fantastic. The lines are sharp and clean. I assume, even though you never said it, that you used your coring system. Is that right? Which corer did you use?
 
Pretty bowls Vaughn! The grain on those are awesome. :thumb:

Maybe you could build a shelf to fit the big bowl and sell it with the bowl. ;)
 
Certainly nice work, as usual, that elm is very near the Keyaki that I use so much, it too is hard to turn, really dulls the tools fast, but the effort is usually worth it.

Fine work indeed! :D
 
Thanks guys. Doug, you're right, I used the McNaughton rig to core the blank. It was pretty challenging. The curved knife had to go real deep before I could pop the core. (The rough blank was about 24" in diameter.) Also, when the RPM was set for a reasonable speed in feet per second at the rim (200 to 300 RPM is pretty darn quick at the rim), the piece was turning real slow 3 or 4 inches from the center. That made catches more likely (at least it did for me).
 
Thanks, Larry. Yeah, the limited amount of feathering I've seen hasn't gone real deep. Sure is cool stuff when you can hit it and keep it.

How big is that piece of feathered chocolate that's wasting away at your place? Flat rate box or bigger? ;)

will get yu a pic vaughn..
here ya go, tn_vaughn's chocolate 001.jpg tn_vaughn's chocolate 002.jpg

tn_vaughn's chocolate 003.jpg tn_vaughn's chocolate 004.jpg
this stuff isnt green vaughn but not completly dry either
 
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Wow, that's a very promising piece of chocolate. Looks like the feather figure it right at the surface...something like a platter would likely show if off nicely.

It almost looks like it would fit in the large Flat Rate box if the bottom half was trimmed off something like this...

Chocolate Feathers Marked Up.JPG

Even if left untrimmed, it probably wouldn't be horribly expensive to ship it. Wanna work out a deal? ;) :D
 
Wow, that's a very promising piece of chocolate. Looks like the feather figure it right at the surface...something like a platter would likely show if off nicely.

It almost looks like it would fit in the large Flat Rate box if the bottom half was trimmed off something like this...

View attachment 35633

Even if left untrimmed, it probably wouldn't be horribly expensive to ship it. Wanna work out a deal? ;) :D

now the wood isnt to bad priced but the labor of precuttin it and movun the bottle outa the way well that starts adding up:)
 
Vaughn, them wood slingers always find a way to gouge you don't they:rolleyes:...I bet if the bottle was full he'd move it free of charge! :D:rofl::wave:

Oh, Larry's not gouging like a typical woodslinger. I understand the high risks involved, and that justifies the high price to some extent. A guy could slip and break the bottle, potentially exposing himself to life-threatening injuries, all in the name of woodturning. I'm just so grateful that Larry, a non-turner, would take such risks to life and limb to help out a feeble-minded turner like me. I'd have probably gotten killed (or worse) trying to move the bottle myself. I'm glad to have a guy like Larry on my side. :thumb:













[Whew! I've gotta come up for air. After that load of bull, my nose is getting about as brown as the chocolate wood in Larry's pics.] :rofl:
 
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