Rosewood Bowl

Learning the Turning

I am a rank amateur, a beginner, and a long time lover of wood.

A beginner, yes, but I've found an affinity for wood turning that fulfills a deep need to create, in partnership with the grain and the tools and the various components of time, lighting, and effort that turn a cross-section of tree into a cross-section of culture.  

I'm doing okay for a beginner, I think, and this first piece here (actually the sixth bowl I've turned) was well received when I showed it to my friends.  Either they're being unfailingly polite, or there may be something worth pursuing in this.

Rosewood is utterly wonderful to work.  It's hard, has wonderful grain that has a sort of iridescence as you pass the light across the finished work, like the star in a star sapphire.  I can understand why it's found in your better class of guitar fingerboard, like my old Martin D-18.  

This one was turned from a blank screwed to a faceplate to start with,  and with a dovetail recess on the bottom, which I left in place, didn't try to remove once the work was done.  

 Previous bowls were turned with a tenon base (a round extrusion you grip by squeezing in on the Nova chuck's four jaws).  I find this sort of tenon is hard to remove without risking the flatness and straight-up-and-dicular-ness of the resulting work.  With a dovetail recess the chuck's jaws press outward, and the rim is supported by the rest of the blank.  That felt a bit more stable.

I'll try to document my progress a bit more, take a few more photos, and maybe show you a bit of my amateur's workshop from time to time.

In the meantime, I'm on the hunt for more Rosewood.