Thread: Four Bowls.

A bit of a continuation from my last post, "A dozen blackwood bowls."
Decided that I had enough smaller bowls for the time being and after teeing up an appointment in the new financial year (very soon) with someone who buys for 3 galleries decided some larger bowls would be good to take along to the appointment.
These bowls are not huge however I guess you could say they are larger than average.

Bowl 1 is 440mm x 105mm. I'm not completely sold on the little round surface protectors on the foot (second picture) but they can be easily removed.
Have taken a top view, bottom view and three dimensional picture of each one.
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Bowl number 2 is 425mm x 90mm with a wall thickness of 13mm.

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Bowl number 3 is 440mm x 115mm with a wall thickness of 23mm. This bowl had a hollow birdseye in it just on the rim which is the reason it has been made with a thicker wall thickness. I felt that trying to make a thinner walled bowl would have been inviting an annoying situation as that pesky hollow birdseye may have compromised the integrity of the bowl and was not keen to reduce the height of the bowl to eliminate the problem.
You hear on this woodturning forum for one, that, "the foot of a bowl should be about a third of the diameter of the bowl" to make it suitably stable. However I have not yet heard anyone put forward a principle of, "how thick the wall of the bowl should be in relation to the bowls diameter". Perhaps there is good reason for that as really fat walled bowls can still look voluptuous if they have nice curves. Anyway 23mm is not really that "fat walled" on a 440mm dia bowl and there is still enough meat around the pesky hollow birdseye to maintain integrity. I have not filled it with anything and you can see right through it but it is so high up on the bowl that nothing will leak/fall out.
That's my story and I'm sticking to it for now.

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A close up of the wascally birdseye

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Bowl number four is 430mm x 87mm

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Lastly a bit of a "half bottomed" group shot.

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They all have been finished with 3 coats of single pac spray lacquer. The spraying has been a bit frustrating. Ideally you should get an "off the gun finish" but only 2 of these ones came close to that. I think they could/should have used 2 coats of a suitable sander/sealer first as blackwood is a pretty open grained timber. I have noticed in the past it's nasty habit of spitting back out danish oil overnight after it has been wiped clean.
hasNext time I will try the sanding sealer first. With 2 of these ones I have used fine wet and dry paper with water then super fine steel wool for the final surface and the finish is good but it has expended elbow grease that could have been done without.