"Yellow box" bowl

Bruce Thomas

Member
Messages
49
Location
Ararat Victoria Australia
I was out at the family farm last week, cutting firewood, when i came across a fallen branch of a large "yellow box" tree, the tree is covered in thousands of tiny "spikes" As i cut up the limb, i noticed that underneath the spikes the wood was a different color and this extended into the tree by 2-3 inches, I've been cutting wood for around 10 years ( and selling for a couple of years, selling around 120 ton a year) and have only seen this a couple of times before, but never to this extent, i grabbed the bigger blocks and took them home whole, to cut down at a future date, this is the first bowl i have turned from this wood.

the bowl is about 10 inches across ( that's about as big as my lathe will handle ) and about 1 and 1/2 inches deep
Its reasonably heavy wood, but turned and sanded well, i sanded down to 600 grit sand paper and it came up to an almost mirror finish, i applied a couple of coats of Scandinavian oil with a soft cloth and I'm very happy with the end result
 

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Boy don't you hate it when you get some lousy wood to work with..... :rolleyes:

All kidding aside, that is very very nice, I've certainly never seen anything like it, almost looks like it's two kinds of wood!
Your platter certainly shows off the wood nicely!
 
You Aussies get all the nice wood! Well, maybe not all of it, but a whole bunch of it. :D

Beautiful work, Bruce. :thumb:

By the way, you can edit the thread title if you'd like. Just go to your initial post and click "Edit". Then, in the screen that's displayed, click the "Go Advanced" button. That will display a screen where you can edit the thread title (as well as the post itself.) :wave:
 
Thank you guys for all the kind words, as you can probably tell, I'm pretty happy with it, I'm quite fortunate to have the family farm ( around 2000 acres) which has a few different woods on it - Red gum, red box, wattle, stringy bark, and a couple different types of yellow box.
There is something very satisfying about harvesting your own wood, bringing it home and making or turning something out of it.
The dead tree this wood came from is still standing ( although not for long !!) Once down, it should yield a couple of tons, although only the first couple of inches in from the edge shows the unusual grain, but i should have plenty of "blanks" to keep me going for a while !:thumb:

Yes Vaughn we do have some nice woods down here in oz, but I'd love to have some of the woods you guys get in the US, - swap maybe??!! - although not sure how viable that would be ( shipping costs? ) or if its even legal ?:eek:
 
That is gorgeous Bruce! I was going to offer to pay shipping until I saw you were down under. Friend of mine down there just send me some cut offs and the shipping for a 8x8x5 box was just shy of $100!!!! However!!! You have a great looking chunk of plate there and the finish is amazing!!
 
...Yes Vaughn we do have some nice woods down here in oz, but I'd love to have some of the woods you guys get in the US, - swap maybe??!!...

I've got some nice ironbark red eucalyptus in my woodpile. Oh wait. That's an Aussie timber. Never mind. :D

Seriously, I'd love to do a swap like that, but like you said (and as Jim pointed out), I think the shipping would be a deal-breaker.
 
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