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Back in 2018, a friend of mine with a hundred-year-old house had a large walnut yard tree taken down. It was capital punishment for pelting his roof and siding with too many walnuts. He had the trunk and large limbs bandsawed into big beautiful slabs, beams, and boards. I had told him about the figure inside of walnut crotch pieces, but nevertheless they were headed for the firewood pile. So I brought them home for turning, and thanked my friend with a gallon of Anchorseal for the rest of his new walnut lumber.

Here's what the walnut crotch pieces looked like right after I chainsawed them in half.
Fast-forward to this last December, and my oldest daughter was wanting a nice wooden bowl for her new apartment. And I'd been wanting to try out my new-to-me Universal Tool Rest and new Pro Easy Rougher, not to mention wanting to make something with those walnut-crotch blanks. So I decided to turn her a bowl for a Christmas present. Problem was, I couldn’t get started on it until about a week before Christmas. So I researched accelerated bowl-drying methods, and decided to try the bury-it-in-desiccant method. Several reviews claimed that you can dry a rough-turned bowl in about three days, with little to no cracking. I was skeptical, but you'll see my results in the photos that follow.

Here's my daughter's bowl blank, trimmed down just enough to clear the way tubes, and mounted on a 6" faceplate. The rough blank started out at about 16” in diameter. To preserve as much of the crotch figure as possible, I used the center of the tree as the bottom of the bowl, and left some sapwood at the rim.
And here that blank is again, all trued up. Love that figure! The surface you're looking at will be the bottom of the bowl.
The blank was still fairly green when I rough-turned it. But after three days covered with desiccant in a plastic bag, the bowl weight had dropped by about 20%. An existing crack in the bottom of the bowl had opened a bit, another small one formed, and some slight checking appeared in the crotch-figure part. But there were no showstoppers, and some slow-curing epoxy penetrated and stabilized the cracks easily enough.

Then back it went on the lathe. While the bowl was still green, I'd been practicing trying to get good finish cuts, but kept having tear-out problems. But after the desiccant drying, I was able to get clean cuts with another new toy -- a Henry Taylor Kryo bowl scraper, burnished to form the sharpest hook that I could get on the cutting edge.

Here it is after finish turning and sanding to 220 grit, ready for the finish. Final bowl dimensions came out at 10-1/2” diameter, and 2-3/4” high.
Finish for the bowl was Minwax satin wipe-on poly, smoothed with 400-grit sandpaper every couple of coats. I didn’t get as many coats on as I wanted before Christmas morning, so my daughter got to decide on the final sheen. As it turned out, she preferred an even lower gloss. So I applied two or three more coats of the satin wipe-on poly, leveled the last coat with 600-grit sandpaper, and then rubbed it out with #000 steel wool.

In this next shot of the finished bowl bottom, you can see a little checking from the accelerated drying. An existing crack in the bottom of the bowl had opened up a bit, another small one formed, and some slight checking appeared in the crotch-figure part. But there were no showstoppers, and some slow-curing epoxy penetrated and stabilized the cracks easily enough. I'll be curious to see how the conventional three-months-in-a-paper-bag process compares on a future bowl.
And finally, the beauty shot. As this was only my second bowl, I’m pretty happy with the way it turned out. Of course, it doesn’t hurt to start with gorgeous figured blanks!

Beautiful.

Walnut is my favorite.

gorgeous.. Love walnut. Great score on the beautiful wood!
Charles

Very nice! I love walnut. I only just got into woodturning some last year. I have a pile of mesquite that I want to use in an attempt to make a large bowl similar to this. I have the speed reducer and the UTR, but I am trying to build my experience up before I attempt a larger bowl. When I do, I hope mine turns out half as nice as the one you posted. In that 4th pic, your waytubes don't have a spec of dust but look like they have a mirror polish on them. Did you buff them or ???

Thanks guys! I did indeed feel very lucky to get all those nice pieces of walnut. The rest of them are now squirrelled away up in my garage attic, with AnchorSeal on the ends. They should last me for quite a while.

RFGuy, I simply polish my SS tubes with JPW every now and then, nothing special. But when I took that particular pic, I had just finished cleaning up in preparation for applying the finish to the bowl. (I see that I even had the wipe-on poly already out on the bench behind the bowl.) My theory is that the less dust there is in the shop, especially near the workpiece, the less dust I'll get in the finish. So to prep for finishing, I run the overhead air cleaner, and Hoover the dust off of the floor and the machinery using a shop vac with a dusting brush. BTW, if you were about 1900 miles closer to Columbus, I'd love to trade you some walnut for some mesquite. I've been seeing gorgeous mesquite projects over at LumberJocks.com.

Dennis,

This is absolutely gorgeous!!!! Wow, wow wow! You can't go wrong with walnut, it's one of my favorites as well.

I have a great interest in turning- it was the reason I got my SS in the first place. This really makes me want to get my SS restoration finished so that I can try my hand at this. I can only hope, with lots of practice, I'll be able to acheive something like this. The wood is stunning, looks like your cutting and placement (pardon me, I'm probably not using the correct language) of the blank was perfect as this piece really showcases and captures the wood's figure.

Thank you for sharing, it provides great inspiration!

P.s. would you have any recommendations for an interested beginner? I'm not sure if your self taught- but if that is the case, do you have any resources you could point to that helped? Perhaps a website, YouTube video, or book you found helpful? If not, no worries- just thought it'd be worth asking as it appears you've got this turning thing down to a science! Thanks in advance for your consideration.

Very nice!!

Mjrinor wrote:Dennis,

This is absolutely gorgeous!!!! Wow, wow wow! You can't go wrong with walnut, it's one of my favorites as well.

I have a great interest in turning- it was the reason I got my SS in the first place. This really makes me want to get my SS restoration finished so that I can try my hand at this. I can only hope, with lots of practice, I'll be able to acheive something like this. The wood is stunning, looks like your cutting and placement (pardon me, I'm probably not using the correct language) of the blank was perfect as this piece really showcases and captures the wood's figure.

Thank you for sharing, it provides great inspiration!

P.s. would you have any recommendations for an interested beginner? I'm not sure if your self taught- but if that is the case, do you have any resources you could point to that helped? Perhaps a website, YouTube video, or book you found helpful? If not, no worries- just thought it'd be worth asking as it appears you've got this turning thing down to a science! Thanks in advance for your consideration.

Thanks for the compliments! But once you see what true expert turners can do, you'll recognize me for the novice that I am.

I am indeed self-taught. Or more accurately, I've been taught by a random assortment of YouTube videos and turning blogs. But I just recently discovered two great sites, each with loads of expert turning information. Check 'em out:
https://turnawoodbowl.com/
https://www.docgreenwoodturner.com/

The experienced turners here usually recommend joining a turning club if you really want to become proficient. I haven't done that yet, but hope to someday.

I echo all the previous posts, Beautiful, Gorgeous, Walnut is great, etc.

Great Job!

I only wish I could "turn" out something like that.

John

Wow, Dennis, that's beautiful!