This was a weekend project that turned out to be pretty cool. I was leaving my parents house a month or two ago and saw out of the corner of my eye a piece of wood down in the gully that was cut off of an extremely large Red Oak. I suppose I was subconsciously looking for burl wood and this piece had two or three small burls in it so I decided to grab the whole thing and take it home. I wasn’t sure what I was going to make or if it was rotten through (it was kinda wet and we’ve been getting non-stop rain) or if it would even look as cool as I thought.
I mostly just wanted to start cutting into it and see what it looked like so, chainsawless, I pulled out the reciprocating saw and sliced off one of the burls from the main branch. Clamping it with my new Jawhorse I got to work boring out the burl with an angle grinder to start making a bowl shape. It was at this point that I realized this piece had more than just some interesting grain patterns, it looked almost like a Van Gogh painting. It had bark inclusions, spalting and grain swirls that rivaled “starry night“.
I was originally going to leave the bark on the outside but I decided to start taking it off partially because it was beginning to rot a little and alternatively, I had to expose that fascinating wood figure.
The result was fascinating so I began shaping it a little more into something that would be passable as a bowl (wished I had a lathe) without sacrificing too much material. I sanded the hell out of the thing and in an effort to just let the wood do the talking I put only a coat of mineral oil on it.
