I think I posted a while ago that I managed to rescue some lime from a tree that was felled in my neighborhood. It’s all nicely cut up and stacked in the garden under a tarpaulin. One of the pieces went on the lathe, because I just couldn’t wait (it’ll be at least a year before the rest is anywhere near ready for turning).
I always wanted to a big natural edge bowl. I dislike the ones where the curvature of the tree makes the bowl almost unusable. Luckily enough this lime tree had some parts where the surface has almost flat, and I picked one of these pieces. Here’s the result:
It’s been lying around the lounge for several weeks now, and would probably be dry enough to finish turn it. Except there’s one teeny weeny problem: It has shrunk. Not a problem, you might say. It’s just smaller, so what?
Weeeelll, that’s not quite how it works. If you look closely you can actually see the problem in the pictures. The bowl has become elliptical. Now, all bowls do that when they dry. This one, though, has done it to such a degree that there is no way I can finish and still have a bowl. If I put this back on the lathe and turn it back round, there won’t be any side walls left.
Dough! All I can do now is to sand it by hand and accept the shape it has. Well, it was always meant to be a rustic bowl. It’s now just a little bit more rustic. What the hell!