About a third of my bowl sales are commissioned by customers and never appear on the Bowls for Sale pages of my web site, so this blog gives me an opportunity to show some of this work. Typically a customer provides the log or burl from a special tree they recently lost. This is a great way to preserve a piece of a tree that had become a special friend to the family. I recently received a large cottonwood burl from a 150 year old tree that came down in Nebraska. The burl was

This is a story about turning this large (22" diameter) aspen burl into a bowl. The burl was fresh cut (green) and came from the south shore of Lake Superior in the upper peninsula of Michigan. I decided to place the foot or bottom of the bowl on the top of the burl so the natural bark edge of the bowl will be the lower perimeter of the burl. Below are several images showing this burl secured to my Vega bowl lathe. The image on the left shows the burl secured with a face plat