- Side note -
I truly hate segmented bowls, and I don't mean the kind of hate you reserve for vegetables or that really fit guy/girl on the treadmill in front of you at the gym kind of hate. No, I'm talking about the deep down, ugliness that is the intensity of a thousand suns burning a hole in your heart kind of hate. There is just something about segmented turning that to me screams of a lack of originality...and no, I don't really care what your take is on this matter. For me it's highly personal and as such will always be. So save your breath and stop writing the hate mail...I don't care how original and spectacular you think this or that piece is. To me, 99.9% of this type of turning looks like a giant mess of obscure colors/textures that to my eye is just offensive. Sorry...
Anyway...that's why I was even hesitant in starting this bowl...for you see, it technically is a segmented bowl. And yes the irony of this situation isn't lost on me.
One of the problems I face (and any woodworker for that matter) is finding stock for a particular project that is floating around in some obscure corner of my fat head. For me, it was simply how do I turn a large bowl with the limited stock I have on hand? Simple...a lamination of 3, 8/4 cherry boards...But what do I do about the grain not matching? Oh oh oh I know...let's laminate some walnut into the mix...BRILLIANT!!! oi vey...
So that's exactly what I did. But in an effort to keep life somewhat interesting and in an effort to add some interest to the piece, I also quartered the center segment with more walnut.
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The Flower Pot[/caption]
The piece actually turned out far less offensive than I had originally believed it would. It didn't follow the piece that was stuck in my head, but that's for another day I suppose.
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Finished Segmented Bowl[/caption]
I knew from the start that I also wanted the bowl to have a lid, but the flare of the lip kept me up for a few nights as I rethought many many different design possibilities. This hesitation and continual redesign on the fly would be my eventual downfall...twice over!
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Oops...I meant to do that[/caption]
The first lid kept getting pushed thinner and thinner, until eventual disaster
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It's a top hat[/caption]
The second lid didn't fare much better. Somewhere in my head it made absolute sense to inset the center disc of cherry into a much larger walnut disc. Yeah...that didn't work. But let me just say it was a spectacular explosion. However I'm not convinced this wasn't due to a limitation in my smaller lathe so I'm filing this one away for the day I have a larger capacity and more stable lathe.
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Success[/caption]
The 3rd attempt fared much better. It wasn't exactly as I had intended, but it came together and the bowl now as a lid....and in the end it didn't turn out to be the abysmally bad segmented bowl that I have grown to detest...maybe there's hope for me yet.
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Done, diddly un![/caption]