My dad’s wife Karen mentioned that she liked my Chaos Bowl and wanted to buy it. There’s no way that I would charge money for my immediate family members to get some of my woodworking artwork, but I also didn’t think the Chaos Bowl was good enough to even give her. So I set out to design a bowl for Karen, and mother’s day was coming up to it seemed like an appropriate gift. I couldn’t do one just for my step-mother, so I had to make two: one for Karen and another one for my mother-in-law Jeanne.

I designed the heart shape in Fusion 360. This shape was one of the easier ones to do, and it was just a matter of getting the lofting command to work properly.

I’m producing two primary bowls for Karen and Jeanne, but I’m also making three more. I might do a few extras at some point too. Two are going to be for sale, and the third is for a YouTube contest giveaway.

I kept track of my time when I made a few of them. It is roughly 4 hours of my time, and 10 hours of machining time. I’m pricing the bowls at $200 based primarily on my time, but also for materials. I really need to charge $300 to make it be worthwhile; that would be $30/hr for my time (which is really cheap – I can probably get $100/hr doing other things) and $15/hr for machining time (also really cheap – machining time usually goes for $30-$50/hr). I want people to be able to afford my work, but I also need to have some incentive to make back some of my costs and pay me a little for my time. If money wasn’t a concern I would just give everything away.

First we have the Purple Drip Heart Bowl in Redwood; this one went to Jeanne and was the first. Lexi recommend this color. It is from one piece of solid redwood.

The second is the red epoxy drip heart bowl, also in redwood. This was reclaimed water tank redwood; the wood is very “pithy” and soft, and I wasn’t happy with the texture. I do like how the glue-up gave repeating heart figures in the bowl when seen from the top. This was going to be Karen’s bowl, but I didn’t like it enough. So, it’ll probably be the YouTube giveaway bowl. It still looks amazing.

Next we have the oak heart bowl, with “ghost pearl red” epoxy. The oak I harvested myself from a down tree in the Santa Cruz mountains. The epoxy is a “ghost pearl”; it shimmers red in the light and is somewhat clear. This bowl looks amazing. It is for sale.

Next I made two bowls in maple. The first is a “ghost diamond blue” mica powder. The diamond seems to mean glitter, and this has some blue glitter shimmers in the light. More translucent than the last. Also looks amazing. Also for sale.

Well, the next is Karen’s bowl; I used two pieces of the same redwood from Jeanne’s bowl, and glued them together. I made it purple too, as I liked the combo, but sealed the wood with red glitter. So you see red glitter highlights in the light.

The next one will be maple, with a bora bora blue (sort of a blue green). It’s on the machine right now…

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