A friend of mine travels a lot and he finds wood for me on nearly every trip. On a recent adventure he came back with this big block of heavily waxed wood wrapped in plastic that had a piece of tape on it upon which "Goncalo alves" was written. So on that basis I am saying this piece is made from Goncalo alves.
It was very wet upon roughing it out so I dutifully soaked it in alcohol and wrapped it in heavy brown paper. After a month and a half of drying I unwrapped it and to my dismay it was 3/8" out of round. It was oval! I had while roughing the piece decided to duplicate the bowl of a brandy snifter. Fortunately I left the sides round enough to keep that basic shape although it is not as full as I would have liked.
I chucked it up and turned and thankfully I had left the sides thick enough to get it round again. It finished up at about 7" tall and 7" in diameter. The sides finished at a smidgeon over a 1/4" with the bottom a little thicker. If you look carefully you can see some dark smudges where the piece was evidently about to go into full fledged spalting. An interesting wood to work.
Thanks for looking. The view from the top makes the wood appear lighter than it is.
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