4 cherry bowls

My latest turning project began with Leslie and me cutting down some trees for firewood.  One of the trees we put on the ground was a tall, but narrow Black Cherry that had been standing dead in the forest for at least 3 years.  It had several large holes from a Pileated Woodpecker, and most of the bark had fallen off the trunk of the tree.  Some of the cherry wood under the bark was rotten and there were a lot of surface checks all over the trunk.  As I cut the log into smaller sections to split later for firewood, I managed to salvage 2 small sections, 8 inch diameter and 12 inches long, that looked fairly intact.  I later cut these sections lengthwise down the middle to remove the pith and form 4 turning blanks.  The interior cherry wood was bone dry, so I didn't have to worry about treating these blanks with any solutions that would limit moisture loss and prevent more checking. 
While turning the first blank, one of the 2 larger blanks, I encountered some of the rotten surface wood and some worm holes, so the resulting simple bowl form ended up to be the smallest bowl in diameter at just under 6 inches.  It is about 2.5 inches tall, so that helps counter the smaller diameter.  This bowl has a continuous curve in profile, a clean convex line, from the bottom foot to the lip of the bowl.
For the second bowl I turned a shape that had a concave profile with the lip of the bowl flaring out from the body of the bowl.  There weren't any worm holes on this blank but the blank was one of the two smaller ones and its final diameter was right at 6 inches.  It is about 2.0 inches tall.  The wider diameter helps balance the smaller height.
Third bowl was turned from the other smaller blank and because I wanted to turn a square bowl or a bowl with wings, I had to shape the blank on the bandsaw so that the top of the blank (also the top of the bowl) was exactly square--otherwise the wings of the bowl will not turn out equal and cause all sorts of problems in turning.  The body of this bowl is convex until to get to the wings and then the profile changes over to concave to shape the wings.  With the wings or corners on the bowl, you have to be careful as the bowl is turning and keep your hands and the chisels out of the way.  As the bowl turns, the wings appear as a faint image instead of a solid shape, so you can forget where the wings begin.  Also undercutting the wings is somewhat delicate as you thin the wood, so you have to go slowly when removing the wood under the wings.  Again, this bowl is right at 6 inches in diameter, or should I say 6 inches wide as it is a square.  Like the other bowl turned from the small blanks, this bowl is about 2.0 inches tall.
The last bowl was turned from the remaining larger blank.  I wanted to turn this bowl with a straight side, tapering down from the lip to the foot.  Again, no worm holes so this bowl ended up being the largest bowl of the four, with a diameter over 6.5 inches and a height of 3.0 inches.  This bowl has wall thickness that is likely the thinnest that I have turned.  If I get a thickness of less than 0.25 inches, I am pretty satisfied, and this bowl is somewhat less that 0.125 inches in thickness.
I used General Bowl Finish on these bowls, a product that I learned about at our local Wood Turners Club, and this was my first opportunity to try it.  I put 3 coats of finish on this bowl and lightly sanded the pieces between coats.  The finish helped bring out the color and grain of the cherry nicely.  I has a fairly shiny luster, but not enough to make the bowl look plastic.  Once the finish has cured (72 hours or so) I can apply a coat of carnuba wax.  General Bowl Finish and carnuba wax are both food safe, so the bowls can be both functional and decorative.

These 4 cherry bowls went to the Greyhound Christmas Auction.

Weekend fun

As honorary greyhounds and grey supporters, we spent an hour at Nittany Greyhounds' picnic and open house.  Since they don't have muzzles Gambol and Buddy enjoyed their own turnout near the greys' where they dug under a rotting stump and enjoyed the new smells. Greys have very thin skin so whenever they play together they wear their racing muzzles. We decided that Brittanys and Greys have opposite athletic clocks:  Brittanys rest for 6 minutes and run the rest whereas greys run for 6 minutes and rest the rest. 

After the picnic we offered the boys new concept: swimming at Black Moshannon.  Buddy walked right in but stopped about belly deep which, conveniently, was at the end of his leash.  Gambol, off leash, ran in and right back out with no intention of actually swimming.  He chased a leaf and realized his mistake when his belly got wet.  The air was 55 and the water was only slightly warmer. We are very excited that the boys are  much more trustworthy off leash.  It's so much more fun to be able to work in the forest with them exploring nearby.

Reading
76The Columbus Affair: A Novel ***downloaded for Android Kindle and borrowed the book from the library for 2 weeks.  That's great; no more poorly written, poorly edited freebies?  With the soft brown sepia background it not bad reading at night, but I don't like the screen glare.   Novel reminds me of Dan Brown's daVinci Code but this is about Columbus, a Sephardi Jew, seeking safe haven for Jewish treasures and people in the New World.  Isabella and Ferd didn't fund Columbus's journey.  Jews did!
75Jared's Island**John Thayer (Young Adult fiction I'd guess.) An almost disasterous boat trip in the ocean turns out to be a blessing for both Jared, and the hermit living on an Island after Jared's boat washed up on the rocks. As the unlikely pair help each other, both lives are enriched in the process, and they are forever changed.(Amazon summary)
74Rabid**TKKenyon A priest of the modern Roman Inquisition arrives in a New England college town to investigate allegations of child abuse by the local parish priests who have suddenly and mysteriously disappeared. The priest, a famous scientist in his own right, is immediately drawn into the private hell—and bed—of a pretty parishioner who confesses that she wants to kill her husband because of his infidelity. The husband, a prominent yet self-absorbed professor, is relentlessly driven by his mad quest to win the Nobel Prize and by his brazen and reckless lust for his students. When one of them falls ill with a mysterious neurological disorder, no one knows how bad things really are—until the subject of the professor’s secret research is revealed. (Amazon summary)
73The Threat**Jonas Saul His mother is dying of cancer and his father has sent him out to purchase medical weed from an unknown dealer. Things go bad fast. During the deal on the fourteenth floor of an apartment building, the dealer disappears, and Drake is stuck in the apartment with a dead woman. The police are at the door. He has nowhere to go. On the run from the police and the maniacal killers intent on framing Drake for murder, he must uncover the truth before it is too late. He discovers there is a reason behind the madness that has become his life. That information takes him back twelve years to when he was hospitalized with a concussion and his fiancée went missing. (Amazon summary)
72Desert Angels** George Saunders Post-apocolyptic WWIII nuclear winter and zombies are on the attack.
71Seven Patients ***Atul Kuma Med student relates experience with humor in his rotations.
70Polar City Red **Jim Laughter After billions of people die due to the failure of Earth’s ecosystem and the continents are rendered uninhabitable, survivors forced to migrate north must battle nature, raids by hungry scavengers, and man’s folly against himself in a geodesic polar city deep in the Arctic Circle. A medical doctor and college professor rescued from the frozen tundra by a grizzled old hunter is thrust headlong into a life and death struggle for the existence of humanity. Hidden government conspiracies, a secretive military force, and the Earth itself threaten to destroy mankind.
69Soldier Dogs****Maria Goodavage stories of modern soldier dogs and the amazing bonds that develop between them and their handlers. Beyond tales of training, operations, retirement, and adoption into the families of fallen soldiers, Goodavage talks to leading dog-cognition experts about why dogs like nothing more than to be on a mission with a handler they trust, no matter how deadly the IEDs they are sniffing, nor how far they must parachute or rappel from aircraft into enemy territory.
68Dancing Dogs**** Jon Katz Short stories about lives of dogs, some happy, some tear jerkers, some less about dogs than the animals that share their lives.
67Fall of the Citizens**Eric Thomas Utopia doesn't work.  Socialism doesn't either. Power corrupts. Three lessons from this freebie.
66Sky of Red Poppies ****Zohreh Ghahremani What starts as a casual friendship between two schoolgirls coming of age in a politically divided 1960's Iran under rule of the Shah, the girls contend with becoming the women they want to be, and in doing so, make decisions that will cause their tragic undoing.  Sky of Red Poppies is a novel about culture, politics and the redeeming power of friendships.