An eventful bowl

Last Christmas, I made Jillian the scrap wood table for her station at work. This year I wanted to make her something as well, but hopefully a lot less time consuming. I decided to make a small bowl, that she could fill with candy and set on-top of the table. I decided to use a nice black walnut burl blank I picked up several weeks ago to make the bowl, as I thought it would go nicely with the walnut legs of table.

I knew she was going to be working late a few nights ago, so I thought it would be a good time to make the bowl. When I was rough milling the blank at the bandsaw, something didn’t feel right, but I couldn’t put my finger on it. About 5 minutes into turning the blank I realized what was wrong, the blank was still wet. After verifying the blank was hovering around 30% with my moisture meter, I begrudgingly decided to rough turn the bowl and set it aside.  This Christmas present will just have to be a belated one.

While turning the bowl, I realized this was a milestone event for me; my first “green” wood turning.  I now see why  people enjoy turning green wood. Turning it with my carbide tools required a lot less effort, and it produced nice ribbons in stead of the dust I normally get. I must have been enjoying my self to much, because I had another milestone event in my turning career, in this case a bad catch. While I was hollowing out the inside, the tool dug in, and was ripped out of my hands. Thankfully, I escaped injury, and the bowl only sustained minor damage, that I was able to clean up without to much effort.