What a privilege it is to collaborate with Nature.  Green wood is a medium that has a lot to say; there is no blank canvas.  Nature is a dance partner, and she usually takes the lead.

Goose-inspired bowl carved last year.

Especially in pieces like the bowl to the left, the natural form in the tree has much more influence on the design than I do.  I wrote about that bowl early last year in this post, including a discussion of how I went about making it.  I won’t bother repeating the whole discussion here, but I found a culled cherry tree recently and saw another bird in part of it (top photo).  I’ve begun to hew and hollow it, and I thought I’d share some photos of my progress.

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Taking into account the unique character of this crook, I’ve decided on some design differences from the one referenced from last year.  A few things to point out in the slide show above: After splitting, I hewed the split surfaces by working with the adze across the grain; I then flattened the bottom surface further with a plane; I adjusted the upper round of the body with a drawknife, then sketched some rough outlines on the upper and lower surfaces; After doing some basic hewing of the body, I hollowed with adze and gouge.  Hopefully, I’ll finish the green stages this weekend.

For the portion of the hollow near the neck, I wanted an undercut area that couldn’t be reached with a bent gouge.  A spoon gouge may have worked, but it was a perfect use for the twca cam.  I recorded a simple video of working with the twca cam — nothing special, but I thought it might be useful to somebody: