These turnings are all made from unique sections of trees. The first stage is to extract the useable part of the tree with a chainsaw. This might be a burl protruding from the side of the trunk, or perhaps a just a section of the tree where the grain patterns and colour are particularly … interesting. Next, the piece of wood is put on the lathe and roughed out. When this process is finished, the walls of the bowl are approximately 3/4" to 1" thick. Once this rough form is achieved, the piece is removed from the lathe and put aside to dry. The pieces are air dried in a slow methodical process.They are moved from shelf to shelf in progressively drier areas of the workshop as they lose moisture. This may take from three to nine months or more depending on the species of wood and how much moisture it contained when the work began. When completely dry, the roughed out bowl is put back on the lathe and turned and refined to it's final shape and thickness. The surfaced is smoothed with at least seven progressively finer grades of sandpaper. The final finish is often Tung Oil, a natural penetrating oil finish. If the piece is intended for food use, a non-toxic salad bowl finish is applied.

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