Blackbean Bowl

Or is it?

To my surprise and horror, I just discovered that I do not receive any notification when someone comments on one of my blog posts, and I have been unintentionally ignoring all the wonderful comments I have received until now. I am so sorry. I will find a way to fix the notification issue for myself, and in the meantime, I will do my absolute best to check for comments.

With that said, it's a simple project this week. I made this bowl several weeks ago, but it has been waiting its turn for a long time. I found this piece of wood (which is actually two glued up pieces) buried in my neighbor's mother's husband's woodshop, which means this piece of wood could have easily been waiting around for half a century, or more. It sat in my shop for a few years until I finally felt confident enough that I might not ruin it.

Wood species identification is a deep rabbit hole. I crawled down there for a while trying to identify this particular piece of wood, and the best I could do was to claim either Bubinga or Blackbean. Bubinga, while exotic, is definitely more common than Blackbean, so I was leaning in that direction. But, more of the pictures I could find of Blackbean wood were a better fit, though some Bubinga pictures looked quite similar also. My dad, a carpenter his whole life, immediately thought it was Blackbean. That's what I'm going with for now.

It's quite heavy and quite hard. The grain is coarse, but it also feels smoother than it looks, and the end grain appears to be closed, or the pores are extremely small. What do you think?

I cut off the corners because it's faster than turning them off on the lathe. I don't know why I didn't cut it round on the band saw as I've done with other pieces. Sometimes I just do weird things.

The wood was pretty nice to turn as far as getting a nice finish, but it made an absolute mess. Where I would normally get curls or shavings while turning, this piece only came off in what I can describe as an explosive powdery mess.

The result, however, is one of my favorite bowls thus far. It's completely simple, but I think the proportions and shape, along with the characteristics of the wood, are wonderfully beautiful.

I can equally imagine this bowl either being used by a person a thousand years ago to eat a salad, or sitting on an ultra-modern table as sculptural art, and that feels like success to me.