Herb Chopping Bowl/Platter

[tekno.mage]

As the rather horrid little chopping board that came with my nice curved herb chopping knife thingie is now on it's last legs and I'd been given a couple of nice plain sycamore 10" blanks by a friend from the turning club, I decided to make myself a better one.

It's been well over a year since I turned any kind of bowl, so things didn't go as easily as I'd hoped and I ended up with far more ridges from the gouge than I wanted and had to resort to really rather a lot of shear scraping to get rid of them and some of the tearout on the inside even needed the application of the dreaded powered 80 grit gouge.

Anyhow, here it is and I'm fairly happy with the final result, if not the process of getting there.

Side view

Base (I held it by a spigot to hollow it. I removed the spigot and slightly dished the base as it's a chopping board and needs to be very stable in use, despite it looking aesthetically far better with a small foot.) Masarn, BTW is welsh for sycamore.

View including the herb chopping knife it will be used with.

It's finished with a couple of coats of walnut oil.

 

[wizer]

I've spent the day processing gigantic planks of sycamore into gigantic bowl blanks and all I kept thinking was: "I hope the next bit is clear and plain" and not one bit was as nice as that. I guess some people might think it's bland, but I love Sycamore when it's that colour!

This is one of those things that I wish I'd thought of. We use those curved herb choppers, or Mezzaluna as we call it. Very useful things.


Well done Kym.

 

[Stravides]

This looks lovely - I am a fan of sycamore also - unfortunately all I seem to make from it are pens n cereal type bowls.

 

[CHJ]

That's a result to be very satisfied with Kym, I like the form you have chosen, it has a balance of practicality, fitting your knife and enough weight to avoid skittering across the worktop yet looks good proportions.

Nice to see some clean Sycamore, lovely wood for the purpose but so often more suited to decorative work due to poor drying.

 

[tekno.mage]

It was a particularly nice piece of pale, straight-grained sycamore - and well suited to kitchenware. I have another piece from the same batch, but that has a small knot in one side and twistier grain. I think that will probably become a more decorative piece.

I found it quite helpful to base the design around the curve and width of the knife - truely a case of form following function!

 

[skeetoids]

Simply beautiful, simple, clean, smoothe. Like it a lot TM.

 

[Jonzjob]

I do like that Kym. Lovely and practical.

I really don't appreciate things very much that could be practical and aren't.

 

[monkeybiter]

Even without the practical use I think that's a really attractive piece.

I don't get time to practise enough to be good, but I have decided that whatever the means, it's the end result that's important, so while I try to reduce the need for sanding, I don't worry too much about doing it.