Greenwood carving calls for flexibility. I do my best to decipher clues about what will be found inside the log. Still, I’m often surprised. Sometimes, a total redesign is required. The cherry bowl in the photo above ended up very different from what I envisioned when I started digging in.

I laid out a symmetrical bowl with handles, but as I started hollowing with the adze, I noticed hints of past trauma to the tree on that left side. So I started digging over that way to explore the extent of it.

Two main areas with bark inclusions and cavities. There was a legitimate argument for just tossing this one onto the firewood pile before investing any more time in it. But I thought I’d explore a little further and see if I could redesign and make something out of it.

I chopped and shaved the troubled end lower until I was past the major problem areas. The bowl would now have one end higher than the other. And eliminating the handles would allow me to dig further toward the end, past more of the trouble.

I decided to make the shorter end narrower, too. I sketched one side of the bowl freehand until I liked the lines. I’ll write another post soon about how I transferred that to the other side.

Then I adzed, gouged, hewed, and shaved the bowl to shape as usual. There it is at the end of the green carving stage, ready for drying.

After a few weeks of drying, I did the final shaping and surface carving, including the flutes on the tall and short ends.

To hold the bowl steady while carving the flutes, I turned to my pant-leg-full-of-beans that I wrote about in this post. The bean bag conforms to the bowl hollow and keeps it steady and supported.

There they are right-side-up.

On the foot, I carved a relief of a simple tree, making sure that all parts of the image were carved below the level of the outer rim of the foot. To do the carving, I kept the beanbag under the bowl and wedged it against a sandbag to take it easy on the edges of the completely-carved bowl. I was able to just flip the bowl/beanbag stack around as needed.

Then, I decided to paint the image with artist’s oils. A little surprise when someone flips over the bowl. I even thought about putting a little notch just below the rim at the end of the hollow so that it can be hung from the wall and taken down for use as a bowl. I haven’t.

This bowl is available for purchase. It is 15 1/4″ long, 7 3/4″ wide, and 4 3/8″ high. That dark area in the upper corner has a sliver of an opening between two growth rings. I’m not worried about it, but it’s worth mentioning. Of course, since it’s cherry, the color will deepen quickly. If you’re interested, please email me at dandkfish@gmail.com. The price of $825 includes insured shipping. Update: SOLD. Thanks for looking.