Video: The adage goes, “measure twice, cut once.” Frank Howarth’s projects are a little more complicated than the average woodworker’s, so he measures a slew of times, cuts out test pieces and, yes, still makes mistakes. But it’s all in pursuit of the perfect bowl.
This particular bowl started as a raw hunk of maple. Howarth turned it on a lathe and left it to dry over three years ago. Once the wood was dry, he noticed a few unpleasant knots disrupting the grain which had to be cut away. No one wants a bowl full of holes, so he plugged them up with an imitation brick pattern made of maple and walnut strips.
He got everything to fit, but amazingly, he seems pretty displeased with the result. Nonsense, Frank. It might lack the panache of your Death Star project, but this bowl is sweet as hell. And once some scrappy VC-backed tech business moves in to rent the space inside, you’ll start to think so too.