Bowl Badge

Personally I’d love to see a tutorial on how you do that. I have a bunch of scraps from some exotic woods that I’ve been hauling around since 2004. And if you use the forge, it counts!

Thanks! That worked a charm!

For anyone wondering what the other side looks like here it is. Approx 10 wide by 3.5 high. This is turned from a burl from a tree my neighbors had to cut down last summer. Those T-shaped features on the right are where the burl grew to completely enclose a ripple in the outer bark. The bottom of the bowl is the outside of the tree so the white streak connecting the T-features is where the tree was growing new sapwood around the defect.

This type of growth is why the grain in burlwood can go in crazy directions, even turning in on itself. For instance, look at the right-most T-feature. Just to its left what looks like a rough patch of wood is actually sanded glass smooth. That’s end grain showing up adjacent to long grain. If you saw that in moving water you would recognize it instantly as turbulence. This is also turbulence, but manifest in wood and with the corresponding time-scale that it occurs over decades. But if it were possible to film it for a decade and speed it up it would evolve just like a water whorl. Cool, huh?

There’s a lot more of that burl where this came from. This was literally the smallest piece in the stack. (Also, coincidentally, the driest which is why I chose it.) The yellow circle shows where this bowl was cut from. I’ll try to find on-topic ways to post pix as I use up more of this burl. More bowl badges, maybe? :innocent: On the bottom far left is a large slab with a huge bark inclusion. Looking at the lobed shape you can almost see the turbulence whorls in motion as the tree grows around the defect.

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Love the shape and the colours! I can imagine the smell is amazing. A guy local to me makes feather boxes, he was showing me and they smelt so wonderful. He said he collects the little brown berry things off the cedar trees and chops them up in a food processor, squeezes out the oil and uses that to preserve the wood.

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Fascinating! Another lovely piece.

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