My Nephew’s wife passed away in January. The funeral was held in a private family cemetery. The day before the funeral an oak tree was cut down to give better access to the services. The tree was cut into about 16" sections. After the funeral I asked if I could have the three logs and was given permission to take them. I put anchor seal on them to keep them from cracking because I was out of town and a few days before returning home.
I split one of the worst logs in half and trimmed the blank up to get the square edges off and mounted it with a face plate to my lathe.
I roughed the bowl on SuperBowl Sunday to between .75" and .675" and left the bottom quite thick. I cut a tenon on the bowl for a 100MM chuck jaw because I wanted a relatively wide base to later engrave on the Shapeoko.
Here is the outside roughed and the 100 MM tenon cut. I reversed the bowl and roughed out the interior. I put anchor seal on the whole bowl and put it in a paper sack. The bowl weighed 3 LB 1OZ when I put it in the bag. I set a calendar reminder for 6 weeks to check the bowl weight. The bowl had dropped to 2 LB. I decided to finish the roughed out bowl. I turned the bowl that had warped oblong and got the top about 1/4" but the bottom was still about 1.25". I wanted a stable base to engrave on. I applied Mylands Cellouse Sanding Sealer (2 Coats) then Hampshire grits and finally a coat of Doctor’s Walnut Oil. I applied about 5 coats buffing in between.
After finishing the outside and inside I mounted the bowl in a Longworth Chuck to hold the bowl as I cut the tenon off the bottom. I did have the bowl flip out of the Longworth once but no damage.
So after finishing the bottom I mounted it on the Shapeoko and carved a Memorial Message. I have to do some clean up but came pretty good. The bottom was 5" around and I made a 4" circle in CC and added text on a curve and cut with a #122 1/32" bit. I cut .15" deep because I had to make a small dome shape in the bottom of the bowl so it would sit on the outside rim and not be tipsy on a table or shelf.
Not sure yet if I will paint the text or leave without any paint and just put more walnut oil on. TBD.
Here is a picture of the other half of the log I used to make the bowl. The bowl was 8.75" around and 3.25" high.
I still have two logs and need to make 2 more of the bowls. One is for my Nephew, one for Brenda’s Mother and one for my Sister her Mother Inlaw.
I wanted to test out everything on this first one before going all the way with the others. I think overall the bowl turned out well and the grain is fantastic. This bowl was from the very bottom of the tree where the roots start to spread out. The other two logs were just above this log so their grain may not be as spectacular as this one but for this the grain is secondary to the message of the bowl.