After company visiting us for the weekend, and my sweetie’s birthday yesterday, I got back to the shop this morning. About an hour and a half finish turning the exterior of the bowl (minus the tenon on the bottom), and filling the fine cracks that opened up over the weekend with purple cosmetic mica and thin CA.

After sanding off most of the excess, I put on a light coat of oil so I could see how I was doing. I’ve done some hand-sanding, and have a little more to do next time I get time, but the exterior is just about ready to be finished, so next session will probably be finish-turning the inside of the bowl.

You can see I didn’t get an exact color match on the epoxy filling the bark inclusion, but I think that’s okay.

Based on the fine cracks I see in the image above and below this, I may need another crack-filling session. We’ll see what happens as the sides get thinner…. Normally that means less cracking, but this juniper was under some stress, and that’s showing up now.

Apparently I didn’t quite turn away the screw holes from mounting the blank on the faceplate. Oh well, fill them and move on.

Filling cracks like this, there’s always a risk of getting fill that goes places you don’t really want, but I think this will all be okay after some hand sanding. The other thing is that the cosmetic mica plus CA combination is harder than juniper wood, so I have tiny raised bumps where I have patched that I’m trying NOT to remove as I finish the bowl. I think they make a great tactile point of interest.