Bud is a friend of mine from an Internet travel forum. I’ve known Bud (virtually) for over a decade, and we’ve become good buddies. He’s old enough to be my dad, and probably glad he’s not. As a WWII Navy vet and retired California Highway Patrol officer with a car racing habit, he has a lifetime of stories that are a joy to read.

A while back Bud contacted me and asked if I could help him with his redwood platter. He had a platter that he’d purchased years ago and it needed refinishing. He knows of my lathe work, and figured I have the tools and materials to get the job done. His only stipulation was that he wanted me to keep the platter when I was done. He felt it was a special piece of wood, and he wanted to be sure it would be in the hands of someone who would truly appreciate it. I told him I’d be honored to refinish the platter, and would be proud to add it to my personal collection of turned pieces. Well, somewhere between taking it down off the shelf and getting it boxed to ship, Bud accidentally dropped the platter, and a chunk was broken off the rim. Nonetheless, he taped the piece back in place and shipped it to me, apologizing for the accident.

When I opened the package from Bud, I couldn’t believe my eyes. Inside the box was a platter, 15″ in diameter, made out of the most stunning piece of redwood burl I’d ever seen. The gloss finish was indeed in bad shape, and sure enough, there was a chunk broken out of the rim, but it looked fixable. Here’s how it looked fresh out of the box:

The back side of the platter had a sticker on it advertising the shop that sold or made the platter. The sticker was covering a hole in the bottom of the platter that was used to mount the piece of wood on the original maker’s lathe:

Fortunately, the piece that broke off the rim did so cleanly, and it was a pretty simple fix to glue the broken piece back in place. Hopefully, it would be fairly well hidden once the platter was refinished:

The next task was to strip the old finish off the platter. I don’t have any photos of this process because frankly, the platter looked ruined. I knew in my mind that it would recover, but man, did it look bad. I tried several different strippers and solvents, and nothing seemed to work. In the end, I decided to resort to sanding away all the old finish. To do this, I mounted the platter on my lathe using a vacuum chuck. This is essentially a large suction cup attached to a vacuum pump, and it can hold a smooth piece of wood firmly on the lathe as it spins. This picture shows the platter mounted on the vacuum chuck. You can also see how bad things looked after my failed attempts at stripping the finish off chemically:

And here’s a look at the back side of the platter shortly into the sanding process. As it turned out, the old finish responded very well to 80 grit sandpaper:

A few minutes of sanding later, it was starting to look pretty good:

After sanding the entire platter, working my way from 80 grit to 800 grit, it was ready to start applying the finish. For this piece, I decided to try a finish that was new to me, polymerized tung oil. Pure tung oil can take weeks to cure, but it was claimed that the polymerized version cured much more quickly, typically overnight.

Here’s a closer look at the finish I used:

The tung oil did indeed make the wood grain look great (woodworkers call it “popping the grain”), and did in fact harden nicely overnight, but after 6 or 7 coats of the tung oil, I was still unable to get the kind of gloss finish I was looking for. The redwood was still drinking it up. So I went with my old standby of sprayed clear gloss lacquer. I applied many light coats of lacquer (probably nearly a dozen), then wet-sanded the finish with 600 grit sandpaper before buffing it with various buffing compounds. It was a lot of work spread out over several weeks, but in the end, I achieved what I call a “grand piano” finish. Very high gloss, but without the “plastic” feel many of the easier finishing products leave behind. The photos of the finished platter don’t fully show that gloss — glossy surfaces are notoriously difficult to photograph.

Here’s the front of the platter:

And the back, with the sticker replaced where I found it:

And a closer look at the sticker, showing the origins of this piece. This picture also shows the absolutely gorgeous figure in this piece of wood:

Oh yeah…and the broken chunk on the rim? It’s gone. Vanished. Disappeared. It blended in so nicely that I honestly cannot see the joint where it was glued back into place.

So that’s the story of Bud’s platter. It will hold a very special place in my collection (and my heart) from now on.

At the beginning, it was a fairly innocuous-looking piece of wood…

Next step is to drill a 1″ hole to inset the spur center (the pointy thing, for you non-woodturners) into the wood…

The spur center is driven into place…

And the chunk of wood is mounted on the lathe…

This, sports fans, is what shrinkage cracks can look like…

Starting to get things rounded up…

Now it actually looks like something. I dunno what, but it’s something. The knob on the end is called a tenon, and later that’s what I’ll attach to the lathe while I hollow out the inside…

As I started shaping the top, I discovered that the bark inclusion was hiding another crack…

Let’s get out the crack-measuring tool…

Yeppers, it’s deep…

So is this one and several of the others…

What the heck, let’s see if it’ll survive the hollowing process…

Looks like it worked after all. It won’t hold water very well, though…

The crack at the bark inclusion turned out to be a whopper…

But I think it looks kind of nice…

And it’s all very well ventilated…

This piece ended up being 12 1/2″ wide and 8 1/2″ tall — one of the biggest hollow forms I’ve made. It has a soft, hand-rubbed tung oil finish that seems to compliment the natural flaws in the wood. Hollowing a piece of dry ash this size is a lot of work, and the cracks made it that much more adventurous.

Feel free to comment, critique, or question!

It ain’t perfect, but I’m pretty happy with it. Between the size and the unique natural edge, it’s an attention-grabber in person.

Comments and critiques are welcome and encouraged, as always.

I started out with a piece of dried ash from recent ‘Going Out Of Business’ giveaway at a local firewood lot. This chunk had a wavy outer surface, which looked promising for a natural edge bowl. The dimensions on the bark face were about 24″ by 18″. I started with a beater chisel to make a flat spot for the faceplate…

Then I used long hex head sheet metal screws to hold it. I don’t drill pilot holes. I just drive the screws in with an impact driver.

Here’s the initial blank mounted on the lathe. It’s blanks like this that make me glad I got the dropped bed extension for my 3520B.

Here’s another view. Notice that the spindle indexing pin is in place. The piece was pretty badly out of balance, so needed to use the electric chainsaw to trim it up a bit on the lathe. I use the indexing pin to hold things in place while I’m cutting. Also note the lathe is not even powered up. That’s just a reminder to not hit the switch with the spindle locked.

And here’s the blank after a bit of chainsaw balancing…

Tool rest and extension in place…now the fun can begin.

Do you really want to stick a piece of sharp steel into that?

Making a little headway. The ash is dry and hard, so progress is slower than on a piece of green wood. It’s also still pretty unbalanced, so I was running in the 250 to 325 RPM range at this stage. I would have preferred a bit faster speed.

A while later, it was down to this shape, about 17 1/2″ across.

And a look from the headstock side…

After reversing the blank, I did the final cleanup on the outside of the bowl. The next step was to hollow the inside out. Doesn’t this look like it’s gonna be fun?

Making some progress, but it’s slow going. I was using my Monster Indexer (Oland-style tool bit holder on a heavy handle) for the bark removal stages. You can also see that I’ve slid the headstock back and am now turning over the regular bed, not the dropped extension. This reduces the slight vibration that’s introduced by using the tool rest extension. Even though it’s heavy steel and iron, the extended tool rest vibrates more than the regular one.

Getting there, but the bottom is still about 4″ thick, and the walls are still too thick as well.

Finally to the finished dimensions. I was fighting some tearout, so I used a spray bottle and some water to help make the cuts a bit cleaner. (You can see the wetter spots in the picture.) I still had a fair about of 80 grit work to do on the tips along the rim. I’d rather spend extra time sanding than risk blowing a piece up trying to take the proverbial just one more cut.

And here’s how it looked at the end of the evening. (OK, I guess 4:00 am is not really “evening”.) I still have more sanding to do, plus a bit of reconstructive surgery on a couple spots of bark, but this is pretty much how it’s gonna look when finished. It’s 17 1/2″ wide and about 8″ tall at the highest points.

I should be showing finished pics in a week or so…

Comments, finger-pointing and name-calling are welcome. 

This was some of the wood I picked up a week or so ago at the local firewood lot. (I had thought it was jacaranda, but it’s ash instead. Bonus. And it’s about dry…10% or so moisture.) I pulled some more metal out of the blank before I started (that’s a whole other post), but the head of this nail was buried a good 3 inches or more into the tree. It had been there a long time.

No bowl gouges were harmed in the making of this post. I guess cryo treated powdered metal is harder than 30 year old nails.

BTW, the bowl ended up a bit smaller than it was when these pics were taken. See the pith near the rim in the first pic? By the time I turned that away, my 22″ bowl was down to about 17 1/2″. Ah well, it’s just wood. I hear the stuff grows on trees.

My friend Mark Cothren’s to blame for this one. Although his ‘rough block’ bowls have a different look, I unabashedly took Mark’s idea and ran with it.

This one is red eucalyptus with some neat curl. It’s about 12″ x 7″ or so. (packed up right now, and I’m not in the mood to go dig it out.) The ends are rough cut (chainsaw and bandsaw). I shaped the bottom a bit to put it on a foot and raise the edges off the table, but I intentionally left the bottom rough. The finish is buffed Formby’s Tung Oil Finish with more of Don Pencil’s PL compound. (No buffing on the rough parts.)

I rather like the branch knot that ended up defining the rim of the bowl…

This shows some of the subtle curl revealed on the inside of the bowl…

There’s also the pith from a small branch near the bottom of the bowl…

I intentionally left deep tool marks on the bottom (except inside the foot) to continue the rough vs. smooth contrast…

So…thanks for the inspiration Mark. I did another one in jacaranda (it’s not as nice as this one), and will likely continue to try the idea when the right blanks present themselves.

Whatcha think? Comments are open for all…

For now, here’s a picture of a happy bug, taken during (and about 1/2 mile from) the Station fire in the foothills of Los Angeles.