A big Ficus bowl - nearly 10" (hey, that's big for me!)
In the first half of
this blog post, I cut up a Ficus log and made a nearly 11" round for later turning into a bowl. I sealed every part of it in Anchorseal. Flash forward about 12 days, this past Saturday, and I finally chucked it up and made a bowl. Unfortunately, as with everything Ficus I've ever sealed, it was covered with mold by this point, and a little bit stinky.
I figured I'd turn the mold away. I went with a faceplate on the soon-to-be-concave side:
Here's where I stopped taking pictures, because I made a sweet time-lapse video of the whole turning. This is 1 frame every second. The full, real time to turn the bowl was 72 minutes:
And here's the finished bowl. Note that the mold penetrated through the whole thing, right up the grain lines:
The tenon remains until I can finish sand and then coat it with whatever I decide to put on the finished piece. Meanwhile, it will dry out more. It was quite damp here. You can still see that darn mold poking through on the bottom here. Note the blotchy, greenish areas.
It's about 9-5/8" total. It'll be hard to make an exactly 12" bowl, as the blank would need to be exactly 12", and it would be just about scraping the ways of my lathe. This started out nearly 11", and now is under 10". I had to turn more away from the outside than I wanted as there was a big bark inclusion cutting across it.
Anyone know any remedies for mold IN wood? Should I soak it in alcohol? Light it on fire? Give it to someone I don't like very much? It has an acrid, musty smell. But hey, it looks just like a bowl!