Broadway Maple Wood Bowl

This has become some of my most favorite wood to work. I call it Broadway maple. It was a tall stately silver maple on Broadway street where I live in Lutherville, Maryland. The ravages of time had worked their way and each year I passed it more of it appeared to have died. Soon large limbs began to fall. I describe how I came to get the wood to work in my blog. It is an interesting story. Yet I did get the wood.

The dead limbs produced the subtle staining colors of the wood in this bowl. Pale tans, robust browns, faint pinks and purples parade across the face of the wood due to the electrophoretic qualities of the staining molecules. In science this is process of separating colored molecules is called chromatography.

A knot hole in the bowl was filled with a product called Inlace which looks a bit like turquoise. It has the effect of converting a defect into an asset.