Eucalyptus Bowl completed

As much as I complained about how brutal it is to turn Eucalyptus when it is dry, the bowl I was working on came out quite nice.  The heartwood has that typical orange hue, and the bowl has a lot of interesting artifacts, as is often found in Eucalyptus.  

You can see the little dark spots in the bowl.  I am not sure what they actually are, but they look like little mini, elongated knots.  As well Eucalyptus is tough.  This bow looks really light, but at about 1/4" thick, it feels really heavy.

Perhaps it is the results that have always made me forget about how miserable it can be to turn Eucalyptus.  It is a good thing, because if the last thing I remembered was all the dust off the end of the gouge, I would be reluctant to ever mount this species on my lathe again.  LOL.

Is it Eucalyptus? Or is it Dustwood

I managed to squeeze a drop or two of time today, to get back to that Eucalyptus bowl mounted in the chuck on my lathe.

I turn a lot of green wood, and living here in Northern California, I really enjoy access to species of that are typically not available from local wood suppliers as well as the variety of species that grow here and not in too many other areas of the country: Claro Walnut, Live Oak, California Pepper-tree, to name a few.  

We also have quite a few Eucalyptus trees of several species.  The picture to the right is Red Ironbark.  Most Eucalyptus has that deep orange/red heartwood and a creamy tan sapwood, and you can play and have a lot of fun working with this contrast.

The downside of Eucalyptus, as I was so poignantly reminded of today, is that it is no fun to turn once it is dry.  It is brutal on cutting edges, and almost impossible to get a nice clean final pass on the inside of the bowl, even with a razor sharp bowl gouge.  And what comes off the tip of the gouge is closer to dust that to shavings.  Fortunately, it does sand well, which means...uh...even more dust.

I think I will call it Dustwood from now on.

Spalted Paper Birch Surprise

Lately I have been doing a lot of turning, after having released my video on using wood from  locally felled trees for turning.  Feeling that my tool control had reached a new level, I wanted to put my skills to the test, by attempting one of those really thin-walled goblets  So, out to the wood pile I went to find a chuck of "scrap" wood.

Now, one of the greatest joys of turing green wood is that you never know when you will strike gold in a piece of what was supposed to be "scrap"