Rescuing A Cracked Green Turned Wood Bowl
Several years ago I rough turned a beautiful 13 by 6 inch bowl from a green or wet piece of ash. I promptly waxed the rough bowl, put it in a paper bag, and placed it on a shelf to dry. I intended to leave it for about a year.
More than the allotted time has passed. You could say that life interfered. In the meantime the bowl cracked severely while drying.
What a disappointment! I don’t want to burn it now that it is dry.
I decided to fill the cracked with a series of plugs from different hardwoods: Apricot, Walnut, and Maple.
After re-truing the tenon and smoothing the rim, I drilled one inch holes at the top of both cracks plus another to provide symmetry. After inserting a turned dowel into this first set of holes, I returned to the drill press to drill another set overlapping the first set. I repeated this process for a total of five sets of plugs.
Then I proceeded to remount the bowl, turn the outside and hollow the inside. The bowl is finished with walnut oil.
Instead of cracks I have a symmetrical design and a very nice, large ash bowl, much, much more than firewood.
I didn’t find any Like Button….but I really liked it.
Thanks for watching
Alan Stratton
Your Rescuing A Cracked Green Turned Wood Bowl
Alan, you made my day – and now less wood to my fire place 🙂
I don’t like to see otherwise great bowls going up in smoke. !
Glad you can use it.
Alan Stratton
Hi,
A fantastic idea ! I have several of them too !
Glad you’ll be able to put it to use.
Alan Stratton
Always good to see someone else turn a problem into a “design feature”.
No one who didn’t see the video could tell.
Great job.
Randy Cosgrove
That is the trick isn’t it.
Isn’t that how we advance the state of the art. Make mistakes that turn into features.
Alan Stratton
thanks for the great tip for decorating a crack with other than epoxy or CA.