About this Product
This sweet gum ring dish is made from spalted sweet gum. Sweet gum dries warpy like a pretzel making it unsuitable for much of anything except these beautiful spalted jewelry dishes. In a wooden ring dish this small the spalted sweet gum is very stable. There will be more of these to come. The color and figure are very nice and remind me of an artists palette.
Most people know sweet gum from stepping on the spikey seed pods that cover the ground in the vicinity of a sweet gum tree. Especially if you discover them barefoot!
Food safe, natural, oil finish.
4 3/4” x 7/8”
Sanders Woodworking
Meet the Maker
I have had a love for woodworking all of my life, from helping my father in his garage shop, to turning my first project (a walnut lamp) on a lathe in Middle School shop. In college I helped log dead wormy chestnut trees and build an a-frame house on the top of a mountain in western North Carolina with Robert S. Brunk. A few years later I moved back to Barnardsville and lived in a geodesic dome next door to Bob, who by then had become quite well known for his furniture making and the handicrafts of the southern highlands. I apprenticed him and learned a lot about the properties of wood and the art of design. I also learned to appreciate the beauty of highly figured wood.
I started turning professionally in 2009. I built a website and later joined ETSY. I have had both of those venues ever since. I have just joined goimagine in 2023. Since 2009, I have made and sold over 3000 bowls, platters, puzzles and cutting boards. I have shipped them to Asia, the Middle East, South America, Europe and North America.
My wife Pennie spends most of her free time with our four kids, their wives and husbands and our eight grandchildren but still finds time to help in the shop. Her main jobs these days are keeping my shop organized, an impossible task, and finish sanding puzzles and cutting boards. She helped me build the shop and did most of the work on the walls, insulation and wood racks in the new addition.
My Great Dane, Oscar, is becoming a shop dog. He likes the shavings and the air conditioning.
How it’s Made
My bowls are made primarily from freshly cut logs. I get them from friends and neighbors due to storm damage. I also get them from tree service people who bring them to me instead of the landfill. I cut the logs into sections and then the sections into bowl blanks. I turn the blank on the lathe into the rough shape I want but with thicker walls and bottom. The "green" bowl gets soaked in denatured alcohol for several days. That kills anything that might be in or on the blank and it drives out some of the water. Green bowls have a moisture content of up to 60%. I coat the alcohol infused bowls with Anchorseal (a wax) and wrap them in paper. I put the wrapped bowls on a shelf in the shop for 3 months then unwrap them. They go back on the shelf for 3-6 months until they are at 10-12% moisture. Then, and only then, I finish turn them on the lathe to their final shape and thickness and sand them smooth.
I do make some bowls from dry planks. I have hundreds of planks that I have collected over the last 50 years that are dry and ready to finish turn. Some of them are exotics (like Sapele and Makore) and others are just highly figured domestic planks like maple, Claro walnut and cherry. I have five lathes and I use different ones for different operations and different sized bowls.
I make bowls and platters of all sizes from 4" in diameter up to 30" in diameter.
