This is one in a series of posts about some of my past projects. This was done in October 2010.
It's the first bowl I've done with my chuck. The wood was falling apart as I turned it, no matter how light of a cut I made - a bit too spalted... Eventually got it as good as I thought I would, then started hollowing the inside with my spindle gouges. The bottom is a bit thick at around 3/4" with the sides around 1/4" or so. Just seemed like I couldn't get the bottom any thinner with the spindle gouges without the wood shredding and the tool catching a lot. I had to do a fair amount of sanding and there are still a few tool marks in it. The bottom has a round-over to it - you can see it in the pics. After I got done sanding, I used several towels to fill it and brought my tailstock up to reverse-turn the tenon off and turn a concave foot so that the outside is just off the surface it rests on. (The wood was also tending to shred as I turned the concave foot.) I finished it with several coats of wipe-on poly, then wet-sanded and used 0000 steel wool to rub carnuba wax into it. The wax was polished off after it was dry, then another coat applied with a soft paper towel, allowed to dry, and polished off.