Why Is Your Bowl On the Wall??

Whew boy, am I glad this one's done! And even gladder that I have some remnant of it left to show!

My wife loves Disney. So when I was pondering what to make for her birthday this year and stumbled across this:


I was off and running!

I was headed for a more-or-less copy of that bowl. I was going to switch up the shape and put a little more color into it but the idea behind the feature ring was the same. So I started with a 12-sided segment of Maple that I drilled the head shape out of and poured some tinted epoxy into. Half black and half red.




Then I glued that ring up.


Then I added a thin ring of Eucalyptus on the top and bottom of it. Then a ring of Walnut on each side. Then cap and floor with another segment of Maple. After 85 pieces of wood (7X 12-segment rings + a filler piece for the center of the bottom ring) I was here:


I had good, tight glue joints everywhere and had pretty good pours with all the resin. At this point I was pretty happy with what would be my first segmented turning.

So I mounted my blank up and found issue #1. Your lathe ain't that big dummy. So I trimmed some corners on the bandsaw until I had clearance. Barely. But clearance is clearance!


So I glued on a waste block and turned a tenon and flipped the bowl around and mounted it in my chuck.



I got the outside turned round and the inside roughed out down to the bottom of the feature ring.



Everything was going great at this point. I was really happy with the shape this thing was taking and looking forward to presenting it to my wife. Then things got back to normal…


My Mahogany waste block sheared when I started turning the bottom of the inside of the bowl and off it flew. It was not salvageable without unwarranted heroic measures :-(


So I was crying the blues in the BBQ Swap Thread that night about my woes and misfortunes and went to bed dejected. Then when I woke up and checked LJs, there was a BRILLIANT suggestion from MikeACG that I turn it into a light fixture since half of the feature ring was still in-tact So, change of plans but I was again excited.

First task was to cut the damaged portions off on the bandsaw. Murphy was present. I was careless and got in a hurry and didn't have the bowl secured well. So the bandsaw spun it out of my hands, it jumped off the table and ran across the shop. Luckily, it was still mostly in-tact but there were some new gouges. One which will be forever present (although filled and mostly hidden) in the final product.


I had already put sweat and tears into this piece. So this gave me the opportunity to add a little blood.


After that, thankfully, the tides turned back in my favor and all went pretty well. I cut the bowl down and saved 1/2 of the feature ring and glued some braces in the back.




Then I stuffed some battery powered LEDs inside with a remote to turn on and off. I used some Styrene sheet and decorative aluminum sheet and some screen spline to make shades for the top and bottom.




A couple of coats of BLO and some hot glue to keep the shades on and a sigh of relief! I have to give mucho thanks to the fellas in the BBQ Swap thread for their input and ideas to keep this one afloat! Also to Dave Kelley for sending me pigments to tint the resin for the feature ring and for the idea to use screen spline on the edges of the shades

My sconce was complete! Immediately upon opening (after a little grateful smooching) my wife turned the sconce into a shelf. She said she knew exactly what figurine needed to go on it. I told her the story of the bowl and she said she was sorta glad it had failed because she really liked the shelf instead.

So that's why my bowl is hanging on the wall.