Eucalyptus Bowls

[Thomas Canfield]

A friend brought back a piece of old dried Eucalyptus about 8"D x 20"L from San Diego, CA area and asked me to make him something. The wood had major checks on the ends and some surface checks on the exterior, extremely dry, dense, and hard. I cut off about 6" off each end to try to get the best section in center to turn a couple of natural edge long oval bowls, and then turned end grain the "bowl" with sloped rim and partial natural edge. I tried to center the hollowing, but ended up off some, but still satisfied with result. The slope is 8"Dx5"H and 3/16" to 5/8" wall and NE is 6Lx4Wx3H with 3/8"wall, and finish is multi coats of oil/poly with Tripoli buffing between coats and then Renaissance wax. I can now add Eucalyptus to my turned wood list, but any more will need to be better quality starting material.
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[Len Mullin]

Way to go Thomas, the cracks and colors really add character.
Len

[Thom Sturgill]

I've turned it green. Way to smell up a building. We turned some while at the County fair and you could smell it anywhere in the building...
I agree with Len, the cracks give it character.

[Thomas Canfield]

I think that I would like to turn some green, but there is none in this area. Every time I visit The Big Island (HI) or San Francisco area, the Eucalyptus trees call my name but have not found a way to bring a chuck home. The cracks do add character and made me stop a little thicker than usual just to make sure it stayed together. I expect that when turned green that the grain has more color than what this had.

[Dennis Ford]

There are a few in Houston, I was given some a few years ago. The variety that I tried shrank a lot while drying and got pretty hard (that may be common to most of the many varieties of Eucalyptus).
Your bowls came out nice, I really like the round bottom one.