Not everything I do turns out great and this is the story of one of those occasions. A few months before the lockdown, I was driving through the New Forest National Park where I live and saw a tree that had been cut into sections after it fell across the road. Naturally I did what any woodworker would do, slammed on the brakes, popped the boot and heaved a section of the trunk into my Jeep. When I got home I painted the ends with PVA and it has been sitting under my workbench ever since. I finally decided to see what I could do with it, so I sawed off the two ends to leave me with a nice piece from which I could fashion a couple of bowls.
It was at this point that I noticed the spalting that ran through the log. I've never worked with spalted wood before, so I was looking forward to trying it.
I marked a line through what I thought was the pith with my froe…
...set my wedges…
...and progressively drove them in. I never grow tired of the sound of the fibres splitting.
A few more taps and we have two halves.
I selected the half with the most spalting and flattened the face with my axe.
Time to remove the bark. I used a wedge to remove the bulk of it…
...and then cleaned off the rest with a couple of drawknives.
Looking at what I had I could see that the spalting was throughout the entire log, so I decided to carve an inside out bowl instead of an outside in bowl in order to maximize the size of the bowl and the spalting. So I drew a centre line all around the bowl, tapped in a couple of nails and used a bit of string to draw an ellipse.
Now it was time for some adze work, starting in the centre and working out towards my line, leaving just enough to clean up with gouges.
Before I knew it, I had a pile of chips on the floor and an uneasy feeling in my head. You see normally when you use a razor sharp adze on a log, you see lots of shiny facets where the adze has left it's mark. All I saw was lots of tear out.
Not to worry I thought, the gouges will sort it out.
Although all my gouges were freshly sharpened, they were pulling chunks of wood out of the surface. Never had that happen before. I tried coming from different directions, slicing cuts, but the wood wasn't having any of it. Oh well, let's try the Twca cam.
Sadly it was no better. I decided to ponder it awhile and shape the outside of the bowl with my axe.
Even that didn't go well and a chunk broke off with very little effort. However it did make me realize that the pith was still there and I was the wrong side of it. You might be able to see where I drew a semi circle around it.
I decided to finish shaping the outside and turned to a rasp in case the axe caused any further damage.
So now I had to remove about 3/4" from the rim. I could have sawed this off, but I chose to slice it off with my knife.
So now it was back to the gouges again to deepen and widen the inside of the bowl.
I really brought my 'A' game this time and still got tearout. It was starting to not be fun now.
Here is a close-up of the kind of tearout I was experiencing.
Although I only used minimal clamping pressure, this still happened. I glued it up and left it overnight.
As a last resort I tried threatening it by telling it that these crosses were in memory of all the other logs that refused to be bowls, but it was to no avail.
So I went outside and sat on a stool with some sandpaper. I focused on sanding one spot just to see if it was possible to get the surface any better. It was a bit better, but still not great and sanding a bowl until Christmas was not what this experience was meant to be about. I hate to give up on a project after all my hard work…
...but I had to admit that this log would never be a bowl.
But here's the thing. Just as I was thinking it might make a nice hat…
or even a mask…
...I swear I heard my tools crying out in unison "We want justice! We Want Justice! WE WANT JUSTICE!"
I tried reasoning with them, but they insisted that the log had disrespected edge tools the world over and that was tantamount to treeson (see what I did there), punishable by death.
So…
Here's Johnny!
With a single swipe it was all over…
...and an edge tool had the last laugh.
Gotta go. The men in white coats are coming to take me away HA HA.
Andy -- Old Chinese proverb say: If you think something can't be done, don't interrupt man who is doing it.
A great read Andy 😂 Spalted wood certainly has character but it comes at a price. Even spinning on a lathe with freshly sharpened tools, it can be a PITA to cut cleanly. It makes a damn fine hat though!
My “tricks” for working with spalted wood are 1) soak it with linseed oil (don’t just paint it on, but actually fill it and wait for it to start seeping through, then pour the bit of oil still on the inside back into the jar) then give it a few days to cure, or 2) impregnate it with resin and bake it into something solid.
I’ve got a dozen pieces of interesting wood sitting on a shelf waiting for the resin treatment. Hopefully that’s still a “this winter” project, but we’ll see…
