The two bowls pictured here are from a batch of maple half-rounds that I left too long in a plastic bag, resulting in extreme spalting. That created very interesting figuring, but also made the wood very "punky," very hard to cut cleanly on the lathe.
I treated both bowls with wood hardener after rough-shaping them, which helped, but there is still a lot of tear-out, despite frequent sharpening, high lathe speed, and very light cuts. The long-grain portions of the bowls are mostly smooth, nice to the touch, but the end grain is rough.
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My thinking at this point is that I will finish them with WOP, multiple coats, and just live with the tear-outs. I thought about epoxy-filling them, but I'm afraid that would look weird, because of the color variation, and the large number. I think they are destined to be "shelf-bowls", something to look at but maybe not too closely!
I welcome your comments or suggestions.
Robert