A Maple Pot

Here's a Maple pot, 5 inches in diameter and 4 inches high turned from a nice piece of clear Silver Maple which has a bit of "fiddle-back" ripples in it. I made one similar to this one a little while back. This was wet sanded with mineral oil up to 600 grit. It feels like satin to touch.

9 Inch Segmented Bowl

Here's a nine inch diameter, 3.5 inch high segmented bowl. The base is a solid 3/4 inch thick slab of Mahogany on top of which is (from bottom to top) Teak, Maple and Mahogany. Teak is extremely hard wood. Not fun to turn. Mahogany and Maple are nicer to work with. The rings that make up the sides of the bowl are 12 segments each. This was wet sanded, as usual, with mineral oil. I've been using the mineral oil in the sanding stage for some time now. Sandpaper makes fine dust, and fine sandpaper makes super fine dust. Even if you wear the best respiratory gear, your shop becomes covered in this super fine dust and you'll be breathing it for years. The mineral oil eliminates the dust problem, - and without the loud vacuum dust collection system. The oil is not a problem as long as I'm not using a water based finish over it. I'm not really pleased with the color combination here. It's just not good looking. Not ugly, just boring.

Heavily Spalted Maple Bowl.

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Here I've turned this heavily spalted block of Maple into this amazing looking bowl. In this photo you can see the very center of the log and the concentric growth rings. For newbies, "spalting" is the beginning stage of wood rot, as fungi stake out claims inside the dead wood. The black lines are the perimeter of their colonies. The fungi also color the wood and can produce fade resistant colors in many shades. This wood was from a big Silver Maple we had cut down. I saved a section of that tree for 6 or 7 years before cutting into it. I got to it just in time because it was starting to get soft. I've gotten many nice pieces of wood from that chunk of tree.
This bowl measures 5.5 inches in diameter and 3.5 inches high. It was wet sanded with mineral oil then a coat of boiled linseed oil was applied.

Eucalyptus Wood Bowl #2

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Here's another red bark (Iron Wood) Eucalyptus wood bowl I turned. This one measures 5 inches in diameter and 2.5 inches high. This one had wood boring beetle holes in it which I filled with epoxy mixed with gold pearl powder, which you can see in the small yellow spots in the side of the bowl. When held up to the light, it shines through the gold fills. Kinda cool looking.  This is very hard wood but turns nicely. This was wet sanded with mineral oil up to about 400 grit and burnished with its own wood shavings to a semi-gloss luster. Nice looking bowl.

Eucalyptus Wood Bowl

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This is a red bark (Iron Wood) Eucalyptus wood bowl from a tree in my backyard. It's aged wood (5 yrs) and had wood boring beetles in the wood, leaving holes in it. This is very hard wood. After turning the bowl, I filled the holes with clear epoxy with gold pearl powder mixed into it. You can see them in the yellow elliptical spots on the sides. The bowl measures 6 inches in diameter by 2 inches high. It was wet sanded with mineral oil up to 400 grit sand paper, then burnished with its own wood shavings to a semi-gloss luster. I'm pretty happy with how this came out.

Live Edge Sycamore Wood Bowl

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This is a Sycamore wood bowl with some of the bark left on. From a green (wet wood) whole section of a large branch. It measures 5 inches in diameter by 2.5 inches high. Wet sanded with mineral oil, and finished with mineral oil. This wood was turned slightly off center which is why one side of the bowl has a dip in the edge.