Rescuing A Cracked Green Turned Wood Bowl


Ash With Crack Repair
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.


9 Responses to “Rescuing A Cracked Green Turned Wood Bowl”

  1. Luciano says:

    I didn’t find any Like Button….but I really liked it.

  2. Kurre's Woodturning says:

    Your Rescuing A Cracked Green Turned Wood Bowl

    Alan, you made my day – and now less wood to my fire place 🙂

  3. Jos says:

    Hi,

    A fantastic idea ! I have several of them too !

  4. Randy says:

    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

    • Alan says:

      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

  5. Troy says:

    thanks for the great tip for decorating a crack with other than epoxy or CA.