DH has a tool with a curved blade that allows him to get a series of bowls (in decreasing sizes, one inside the other) out of one block of wood. Without this tool, the entire inside of the bowl becomes sawdust; with the tool, multiple usable bowls and much less sawdust.) He demonstrated the tool at his woodturning club meeting a few weeks ago, and since then we have had a steady stream of woodturners dropping by to have DH help them turn their wood blocks into multiple bowls instead of just one.
Today's visitor had a block of cocobolo, a relatively expensive hardwood from Mexico and Central America. The chunk he started with probably cost $100. For obvious reasons, he wanted to maximize his return on investment - each cocobolo bowl can sell for a lot more than that. I scavenged the small amount of sawdust and chips that ended up on the floor:
Some of it is now in a jar with denatured alcohol to extract the color. I suspect it will produce a color similar to a madder orange. I've used cocobolo as a dye source before, but it was a much darker piece of wood and produced a beautiful deep russet brown. This is somewhat paler wood, and will consequently make a lighter, more orange color.
Hmmm. Some visuals about the bowls would be a good idea. I didn't get a chance to snap any pictures of the visitor's cocobolo bowls, but here's a set of elm bowls that DH is working on. The largest bowl (still unfinished - he's testing several different finishes, which will be applied after a final sanding) is big - about 14.5 inches (37 cm) in diameter:
These 4 bowls, still in rough form, came out of the center of the biggest bowl:
Sort of like those handpainted Russian and Japanese dolls that come apart to reveal a smaller version inside, and another inside that, and so on...
4 comments:
How very cool. And inventive. And 'green'. :)
cheers,
Laura
Very interesting post. Can't wait to see how the dye turns out!
ohh! just the name sends chills down my spine.the color of madder without its predicaments.
Weavers need a tool like that. Something that turns thrums into ever smaller versions of whatever the thrums came from in the first place. You start with a shawl. Then you have a scarf. And finally, you have a bookmark.
Could you get Mike to work on such an invention? :)
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