The bowl part 2

Another approach to make a bowl involved working with pieces of wood connected with epoxy resin. Unfortunately, after three weeks of waiting, the bottom part of the bowl still hadn't dried. To proceed with my project, I needed to cut out the bottom part.

When I did this, I didn’t cut it straight. Since it was a mix of epoxy resin and wood, I couldn't use a sander for either material without damaging the other. I had to sand it manually with the largest sandpaper I could find ( see below the fig.1) the biggest piece of sandpaper was glued to a big wooden desk. This was the hardest part of all. I couldn't achieve a perfectly straight finish because I was running out of time, and my hand was in a lot of pain.

Fig.1, Future bowl on a big piece of sand paper

After deciding that the surface was as straight as I could achieve in that situation, I attached a part from a machine designed to shape pieces of wood into forms, such as bowls (the name of that type of machine is lathe). To do this, I drilled three holes using a drill and then used a screwdriver to secure the part from the machine to the bottom of my future bowl with screws.

    After setting up the bowl on the machine, the next step was to flatten its top surface. Some wooden bits were uneven, as the epoxy resin didn't cover them evenly. I used a sharp gouge tool to smooth out these bumps. 

    

    After reaching my goal, I used a special tool to carve out the middle of the wood. (You can see this in the video below.) 

    Then, I switched to a round-nose scraper tool to carve out the middle of the wood. This tool helps create the initial hollow shape, similar to a bowl. 

    The next step involves sanding to ensure a smooth surface both inside and outside of the bowl. Additionally, I'll use my personal grinder to focus on sanding the bottom of the bowl more thoroughly. I will cut out a round piece from the bottom to cover the screw marks. Later, I'll fill this spot with a piece of wood, where I'll use the pyrography technique to add Anhelina's city logo. 

    The most challenging part was levelling the bottom of the bowl after cutting. If I could do it again, I would definitely pay more attention to this step, as it ended up adding extra work for me. However, I'm pleased with how the epoxy resin-infused parts allow light to pass through, creating a transparent effect. The combination of resin and wood turned out to be a successful process. The addition of black resin on top of the bowl created an extra effect, looking like flames when combined with the orange tones of the epoxy resin.