Woodturning is one of my favorite hobbies right now, mainly because I am fascinated by wood with all its various colors and grains. I have mainly focused on making pens, tops, and small trinkets, but on Saturday I decided to take a step up in the woodturning world and make a bowl. It may sound like a simple project, but you must consider that the small bowl must come from a rather large cross-section on timber. What makes the wood harder to turn is that the center of the rough piece is not always the desired center of the bowl. In order to do this, you must mount the wood where the center of the bowl will be between the lathe centers. When you do this, the wood is uneven around the centers, causing wobbles and an uneven cutting surface. And so, when you try to use a gouge to plain the wood into a perfect circle, the uneven sides present quite a problem. This was my experience on Saturday, and at times I thought I would loose a finger or an eye, and the wobbling of the uneven wood even caused my lathe to jump around a bit. But after a few scares and a lot of patience, I successfully completed my first bowl. I put a nice varnish finish on it and now the bowl sits next to the front door and is our key bowl.