Spalted natural edge bowl

One month ago I attended, for the first time, the wood turner’s club in Jacksonville, Florida. They had a lottery with prises including freshly cut wood trunk pieces. Since there were more prises than people participating, I managed to get two large pieces which I promptly put in my car. I was very busy for a week but then I found the time to turn a bowl from one of the pieces of wood. What you see in the picture is the resulting wood turning.

The wood, which I still have not identified, is creamy in colour, without any interesting grain or figure (except the growth rings, which are OK but not spectacular). Since it is quite hot in Florida and I did not use the wood for a week, the wood got infested by fungus. The coloration that results is usually called spalting. As you can see, the seemingly boring wood got interesting color due to the fungus. For those of you that worry that the wood integrity is affected by the spalting, it turns out that, in the first phase, the wood consistency is not affected. It takes many months for the wood to go “bad”.

The bowl is about 10” in diameter and it is finished with shellac (sprayed) followed by waxing. While I do not have a picture with this, the wood is translucent (you can see the light if you hold it toward the sun) and has large pores that let the light go straight through and show up like little sparks.

-- -- Alin Dobra, Gainesville, Florida