Tuesday, October 2, 2007

spalted red elm with wormholes

What a terrific piece of wood I've been working on. It came from my Raleigh, N.C. wood dealer awhile back, NC Wood, Gary Davis. He's on ebay. He has a lot of great wood and is very reliable to deal with. It started out a large block, and I shaped it the usual way...
I had thought I'd do another cocobolo, but cocobolo is difficult to work with, and although the red elm is 3x as large, it'll be easier. Much easier. I remember elm from growing up. We sometimes burned elm in our house of many fireplaces. It was the wood that is nearly impossible to split. The flip side of that difficulty is that it seems stable and not likely to crack and split randomly on its own.
I took 4 bowls to my Rhinebeck Farmer Market this Sunday (where i sell cheese) but technically, NOT bowls. There was a lot of interest in them, as the fall craft fair was at the fairgrounds, and a lot of people going to the craft fair, stopped by the farmer market. I doubt there were any wood bowls at the craft fair as interesting as mine, as I've been to it and seen only "turned" pieces. It is obvious to anyone that my work is NOT turned.
The purpleheart and cocobolo bowls caught a lot of eyes and remarks, as well as the pair of western bigleaf maple bowls that came to me in triangles out of the same large block.
I can't wait to get a digital camera and load some photos on this blog site. Maybe by the time I finish this red elm piece, by the end of the weekend. The spalting and worm-holes are very cool. More about spalting on a later date. As they say on TV, "stay tuned."