It started as a dirty piece of unrecognisable wood.
I had already cut it in half and made one bowl so I knew it was end grain, it had a slight taper from one end to the other, I mounted it on the lathe and cleaned up both faces and in doing so made it parallel, it seemed all wrong to cut a piece off just to make a round bowl so it became a bigger bowl with 2 live edges.
The wood is kauri and very gummy kauri the dark streaks are the gum
there are 2 knots one of them is very gummy the other has no gum around it at all.
The first 2 photos of the top are of bare wood while the under side has an oil on it, it is an oil I use to sand it with, the oil has two purposes one is to stop the sandpaper clogging up with all the gum the by product is that it keeps the dust down.
I will leave it a few days for the oil to dry out before I put some finish
coats on it.
For a dirty old piece of wood that could have easily gone on the fire it is stunning now.
