A Real Firewood Bowl
Posted By Vaughn on January 29, 2011
Back in June 2010 at a show I did in Malibu, some guy came up to me in the booth and gave me a piece of wood. He said it was a Manzanita burl that had been burned in one of the Malibu wildfires. Sure enough it looked like a half-burned log out of a campfire. I told him I’d see what was inside, but I didn’t have a lot of hope for it. It sat wrapped in plastic bags in the driveway for a couple months, and I finally got around to making something of it in August. Seeing as how it’s now the end of January 2011, this isn’t exactly a recent piece, but the photos tell an interesting story nonetheless.
Here’s what I started with. (Click the pics to see a bigger view)…
So I lopped off the horns a bit…
Mounted it between centers…
And spun it up…
Turned a tenon on the bottom. This is showing some promise…
Hollowed the inside. Even more promising…
I put a few coats of shellac on the charcoal parts to seal them, then a coat of Formby’s Tung Oil Finish on the exposed wood. After letting that sit a few days, I hit it with multiple coats of spray lacquer…satin on the burned parts and gloss on the exposed parts. Here’s what I ended up with…
As you can see, I’ll do just about anything to avoid having to sand the outside of a bowl.
– V
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