Better than I saw

I was trawling through a wood turning web site and saw a very good idea

I instantly knew how to make them, then as I started I knew how to make them differently to what I had seen.

What I saw did not have the stalk at the top or the pear type look where the stalk comes from, what I saw was called a leaf I am thinking of mine as being an avocado cross pear.

What I like is that I can make quite a large piece from some smaller pieces and that it soaks up a lot of time that is constantly rewarding.

In order to put some strength in the stalk I have put 2 veneers on each side of the stripe each veneer is .6 of a mm thick and 2 together is 1.2mm you would need to enlarge the pictures to see them I guess.

I think there are a lot of possibilities in what I can do with that wavy line as you can see there is a left and a right hand curve in the photos, I do enjoy forming the dish area on the wood lathe as I like to get the big under cut around the edge, there is also a lot of hand work away from the lathe when I form the rounded edge, one of them has a square edge I think the rounded edge is much softer than the square edge.

The white pieces are Tawa with a swamp Matai stripe and lid the darker piece is Rimu with a stripe of Lancewood the lid is Elm burl, the overall size is about 300mm long, about 230mm wide, they all start off as 50mm rough sawn wood so are a little under that plus the lid so they must stand about 60mm high.

The swamp Matai used in those striped could be thousands of years old as it was buried under 3meters of river silt in a very wide valley where the river must have changed course many times over a very
long time, the Rimu would be quite old too, the Tawa was a wind fall.