Where to go from here?

I have now been making bowls for over a year now.  I have learned a lot of things, both from experience and from other bowl makers.  However I have reached a point that I have become comfortable and I think it might be time to take a step in a more advanced direction. 

I really enjoy making bowls without first creating a pre-cut blank.  So I could easily switch to making that style bowl all the time.  However, that would require a lot of tools that I have not yet acquired, though I am trying, to make the bowls as nice as I would like them to be.  Plus, that limits the variety of bowls I could be making as well. 

Another change I could start doing is to work the outside of my bowls.  Currently I either leave them with a natural look or I just sand off the band saw lines and leave them smooth.  When my mentor works on a bowl he first starts by hewing the outside of the bowl to give it what he calls ,"A more handmade" look.  I have considered doing that or using my spokeshave to give the edges a rounder smoother look to them. 

Of course the option of hand carving intricate images and designs is possible too, but that may be a little too much of a step into the more difficult range that what I want to do next.

Well regardless of what I decide to start doing with my bowls, I am sure I will be happy with my final decision and that many hours of experimenting will be needed to decide.

First Attempt with Osage Orange

I helped Bob, my mentor, cut up some Osage Orange for him to used to make some bowls.  He had a few scraps left over that I noticed would work for soap dishes.  So I cut out four soap dish forms from his scraps and took them home.
I finally got to those forms about a week or two ago.  I sharpened my adze because I knew that this was some really tough wood to work with.  Well that was pointless because after my first chop my adze was dull again.  I took to more chops and the side of the bowl broke off.
Bowl number two and little smaller then the first one so I had to watch my finger tips.  Five chops and a section fall out of the middle of one side.
Bowl number three, I see a trend going here so I decide to take it easy.  First swing doesn't even make a mark, swing harder, still nothing, a little more umph, and success.  Fourth successful chop splits the bowl right in two. 
Fourth and final bowl, about twice the length of the first three bowls.  Start chopping, really don't care what happens anymore, and am actually having some success.  The bowl is taking a lot of work but is slowly being hewn out.  Then I notice it, May adze is so dull at this point that instead of hewing out nice chips of wood I and actually shredding the wood into a pulp that leaving ugly gauge marks in the bowl.
I then decided to grab all four bowls walk back into the house, over to the fire place, and threw them in.  Final score Osage 4 - Me 0.

The big debate with bowl making: What to do when a bowl cracks?

I have several solutions on what to do with a bowl if it cracks.  I feel it really depends one the bowl and on the crack.  Of course If it is a large enough crack  it gets thrown in with the firewood.  However, most cracks are often quite minor and can either be fixed or left alone.

Spoon/thumb rest

Scalloped

The most common thing to do with a crack, of most bowl makers I have met, is to either sand down the edge to a spoon/thumb rest or sand down the edges to scallop the bowl.  Which method to use depends mostly on the shape of the bowl.  It is much easier to scallop a rounded bowl then it is to scallop of squared bowl.
Another major method I have seen used, but have not done myself yet, on a little bit larger cracks is to cut out a piece of the bowl containing the crack and then insert a dog bone, butterfly, of bow tie shaped piece of wood to pull the crack, filled with glue, tight and sand smooth.  On smaller cracks often the crack is just filled with glue and sanded smooth.
I have also just left a crack in a bowl.  This often depends on the type of bowl I have made and who I am trying to sell this bowl to.  Sometimes a few small minor cracks can help a bowl look more rustic or antique depending on the buyers taste.  I often go for the rustic/worn look with bowls that I intend to sell to my fellow reenactors.
So the debate still remains: What do you do when a bowl cracks? There are many options to choose from and some of them may not work as well as others.

Apple how I love and loathe you

Bowl for the kind Lady

Early this spring a lady gave me about three truck loads of apple wood, in exchange I promised to make her two bowls out of the apple wood.  This is not a problem to do and is often common courtesy among us bowl makers. I have one of her bowls completed and am still waiting for the second one to finish drying.  In the mean time I have cut up and carved out several other bowl out of some of the sections of apple limbs and logs that I received from her.

Limb piece

Now while I absolutely love the final appearance of apple...Apple is one of those really unusual woods that can look completely different from one section of the tree to the next.  Lets say a bowl is made out of the trunk of the tree and another is made out of a much smaller younger limb.  These two bowls could vary drastically in appearance.  The piece from the trunk has much prettier and darker rings and patterns whereas the piece from the limb has a nice light colored outside and a much darker middle section.

Trunk piece

Some of the other problems with apple pertain mostly to the trunk pieces.  Apple can have both hard and soft spots in it, specially if the tree was dead, rotten, or bug infested.  Surprisingly the hard spots are not the spots that I have the most problem with, it is the soft ones.  These soft spots are hard to hew out cleanly and can cause ugly blemished or cracks.  The other problem I have with these soft spots is when hewing out the bowl instead of cleanly hewn chips these soft areas will actually either pull apart or absorb my chop turning the edge on my adze. 

Cracked Bowl

Despite all of the problems and headaches apple can cause me it is still one of my favorite woods to work with, even if it is only for the possibility of a very beautiful looking bowl.

One Hot Fair

Last week was the Laporte County fair http://www.laportecountyfair.org/index, this being said I helped my mentor work at the Laporte County Fair in the Pioneer village making bowls.  I was a very interesting week for me, because of my schedule I could not make it to the fair to help my mentor until Wednesday. 
On Wednesday the temperature was in the upper 90s with a heat index in the 100s.  Regardless of this I managed to work all day and give my mentor several chances to take a breaks to cool off.  Thursday was not much better, higher temperatures, few visitors, and many breaks.
Friday we finally got our much needed break in the weather.  It was still hot and humid just not as hot.  This break in weather also meant more people, and its the people that come and see us that make it fun, of course it helps when they buy a bowl or two also.
Finally, the last and busiest day of the fair came, at most fairs closing day usually is not very busy but with the weather of the previous week Saturday was packed.  My mentor got a late start, from being exhausted from the week and had to rest for about an hour after we opened, so I manned the fort for a while.  The day went on with only a couple of slow periods when other events took the crowds attention, but overall it was a very busy and productive day.
Tearing down I got thanked a lot by the other workers in the pioneer village, that had known my mentor for many years, for being there to help my mentor out and was given an invite to continue working at the pioneer village in the following years.
All things considered I would consider this a successful week even if I did not sell many items.

About myself

Adzes

I am a stay at home dad of a 2 yr old girl.  I started hewing bowls in the fall of 2010 when I asked another bowl maker named Robert Engelhardt to teach me, which he did.  A short time later I started buying my own tools and continued making my own bowls.  I still periodically get help from my mentor, since I have yet to buy the more expensive prep tools.

Shaving Horse

I make two different styles of bowls and many different shapes and sizes.  The majority of my bowls are pre-cut  shapes and forms or blanks.  These bowls are planed down in a thickness planer and are cut out from a pattern with a band saw and hewn with a bowl adze.  However, I also make some bowls completely by hand, I call the splits.  These bowls take much more time and skill to make.  For these bowls I start by splitting a log.  Then I plane the piece of wood using a draw knife and a custom made shaving horse.  Next, I shape the ends with a hand axe.  Finally, I hew the inside of the bowl with a bowl adze.
The bowls I make are from green wood that then has to be dried.  This process can take anywhere from about a week to several months.  A number of different things can make the dry time vary, from type of wood to when it was cut to size of the bowl.  To dry my bowls I place them in a plastic bag and turn the bag every couple of days until the bowl is dry.  I then sand my bowls and place my mark and number my bowl with a wood burn, I also burn what type of wood the bowl is made out of, on the bottom of the bowl.  Next, I apply mineral oil to them and let them sit overnight.  The following day or so I apply a homemade beeswax and mineral oil balm to the bowl and am finished.