My first attempt at routed bowls - part 4

I left off with the box elder bowls looking like this:

The moisture content had dried down to 18% and was holding there and so I did the preliminary sanding as well as shaping the bottom with a round over bit at the router table. The round over bit created a fair amount of tear out on the end grain as you can see. So my next step is more sanding. I used my detail sander and 80 grit paper to smooth out the end grain issues and then stepped up to 120 and started smoothing everything else out as well as rounding out the lip of the bowl. Then up to 180 grit on everything, then 220 grit and finally hand sanding the entire bowl with 320 grit to give the bowl a fine polish sanding.

So here is the result after all of the sanding:

The fiery box elder is just stunning. I love the reds and the blues in the wood. Now it was during the sanding that I made my next mistake on these routed bowls. I mentioned that the end grain was soft before and I neglected to put any sanding sealer on the end grain during the sanding process. This would have helped when it came to putting on the finish, I'll talk about why in just a moment.

With the sanding done I wiped the bowls clean with tack cloth and started putting on the finish. For anything that might come into contact with food I like to use food safe finishes. My particular favorite is Howard Butcher Block Conditioner. The finish it gives is similar to tung oil. I've heard that any finish is food safe once it has fully cured but I'm a little leery of trying that out. And I really like this finish so I'm not to eager to switch.

The box elder looks all the more spectacular with the finish applied, don't you think? There is even a little bit of spalting in the wood, which is great. The knots at the bottom of the bowls prevent these from being able to hold liquids, but otherwise they will be of great use around food. They could serve as salad bowls, or hold nuts or candy around holidays. Or for a different bend they could have some clear glass beads added to the bottom and then become tea light or votive candle holders.

But I mentioned the problem of not adding sanding sealer to the end grain when finishing. What happens is end grain, particularly soft end grain, tends to soak up more finish than the rest of the bowl making it look darker or even sometimes blotchy. It's not too visible but it did happen some on these bowls, so it would have been better if I'd taken that step.

So that draws an end to my first attempt at routed bowls. A fun learning process with a few mistakes made along the way, but the end result was still a pair of lovely fiery box elder bowls.