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Saturday, January 30, 2010

Latest From the Woodshop – Alaskan Birch Bowls

I probably won’t be around much this weekend.

I’ll be here.

I’m looking forward to the symposium, it’ll be nice to spend the weekend with fellow turners.

 

I’m bringing a couple of my bowls along. I thought you might like to see them.

 

This first piece is Alaskan white birch.  It’s from a large tree that was felled near my house here in the MatSu, by a road crew clearing the right of way for a new road.  The tree grew in the open on high ground, a place with plenty of sun, and as such there was almost none of the figure and dark heartwood grain common in the wood I usually work with. The blank was almost pure white.  Which is fine, if you like that kind of thing.

Me? I thought it was boring.

So I thought I experiment with a little color.

This piece was created using water-based aniline dye, it took several months to do. I’m fairly happy with how it came out. I like the combination of colors – strangely it looks almost exactly as I envisioned it when I started out, that almost never happens to me. It’s about 12” in diameter.

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This second piece is one of my signature designs.  The carved red salmon are my personal trademark. They accent a lot of my high end work. This is a piece of spalted Alaskan birch burl. The fish are each hand carved from more burl. The idea here is based on the annual salmon spawning migration. This is a fairly large piece, about 14” at the rim.

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You may see some updates this weekend.

But I wouldn’t count on it.

9 comments:

  1. wow again. What talent!

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  2. Absolutely gorgeous! Have a great weekend- we'll just be hanging out annoying ShopKat.

    fraff- the technical term for the cat hair that gets on your jacket when it's dropped to the floor.

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  3. I certainly hope you're entering them in a juried contest, those are a couple of real prize winners. Especially the Salmon Run bowl.

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  4. fumicat - what one has to do after your cat is introduced to the business end of a skunk!

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  5. That first one is beyond amazing.

    untic = the opposite of antic

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  6. Wow! Is that the flock of salmon you were working on when we stopped by back when? You've been busy. And the dyed piece certainly didn't look like that - if it's the same one I remember - very nice!

    Have fun at the symposium - I went a couple of years ago to see Søren Berger do his thing - was pretty cool.

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  7. Transtint applied with an airbrush or hand brushed on? Gotta be you found some ARM-R-Seal finally too.

    Nice stuff.

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  8. Transtint applied with a sponge.

    No, still can't get ARM-R-seal or WaterLox here in Alaska, that's about 15 coats of wipe on poly.


    Karl - yes, those are the piece you saw in progress when you stopped by.

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  9. Oh, Jim, that's beautiful work.

    Have I mentioned how much pleasure the birdhouses are supplying?

    consio: The concierge in an italian hotel.

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