It's a Saturday afternoon in Spring and many of you are enjoying the
outdoors or are in your shops. Good time to safely ask a question that
might be a tad touchy although not intentional.

Why are some turned wood utility items seldom used yet similar wooden
items are commonly used, even when arguably superior materials are
available and affordable?

Glass, ceramics and metals have largely replaced wood for some things
such as coffee cups, cook pots. dinner plates, carafes and soup bowls.
Yes we enjoy _turning these wooden objects, but I think most of us who
_use them do so a bit grudgingly. Sort of like insisting that you really
enjoy tough, stringy, strong tasting game after a great hunting trip
when beef really tastes better. O'Boy, Guess I've done it now!

Anyway after licking my wounds, I'll suggest that most people prefer
wood for salad bowls and servers and wooden chargers, mate cups,
chopping boards and popcorn or fruit bowls more than hold their own
against impervious materials that might seem a better choice.

What's the difference between the treen that we enjoy using and the
treen that we suffer using? Is it a hot vs cold thing? Liquid vs
semi-solid? Watery vs oily? Tactility? Atavistic? Regional customs?
WHAT? Ladies & Gentlemen, start your keyboards and let the certitudes
begin.


Turn to Safety, Arch
Fortiter



http://community.webtv.net/almcc/MacsMusings

"Arch" wrote in message
...
Anyway after licking my wounds, I'll suggest that most people prefer
wood for salad bowls and servers and wooden chargers, mate cups,
chopping boards and popcorn or fruit bowls more than hold their own
against impervious materials that might seem a better choice.

What's the difference between the treen that we enjoy using and the
treen that we suffer using? Is it a hot vs cold thing? Liquid vs
semi-solid? Watery vs oily? Tactility? Atavistic? Regional customs?
WHAT? Ladies & Gentlemen, start your keyboards and let the certitudes
begin.


Popcorn bowls are a gimme. All I need to do is remind a prospect of the
thrill of setting a metal or ceramic bowl of fresh popped in their lap, and
another customer is made. Insulation is the thing, though I make an
undercut "passing" rim on most of my popcorn bowls so they won't spill on a
greasy thumb, too. Same insulation works for dough bowls, but they're
broader-based and smoothly curved inside.

Since I also make the salad servers, they go as nice sets - birch or hard
maple servers, cherry bowl, cherry servers, hard maple bowl, and so on. I
make 'em with a thicker graspable rim so they'll take a drop or three, even
on the very end grain. Makes 'em more durable than ceramic and glass, and a
stainless bowl never sits flat, so advantage to wood there, too.

I think that European beer is a better match to drinking out of birch or
beech (Sorry Augie, just age 'em in beech), being at room temperature, and a
generally stronger mixed flavor. It's bottoms up drinking, not nursing the
stuff, unless you've got an inch thick bottom.

For the rest, well it's just prettier. We aren't bound by a kiln to make
things uniform thickness, or to put "feet" on them for the sake sitting
level. Before someone jumps in - you only heard that you had to have a bowl
uniform thickness, they've been made otherwise for thousands of years with n
o problem. We can even make rims or lips on them if we want, just not the
kind that the mud slingers are able to do. Not to mention, I'll stack a
nice figured or spalted piece up against any Raku out there, and you can use
the wooden one if you want to.

I don't suppose it's coincidence that the folks I like to trade with most at
shows, and the ones most eager to trade with me are potters. Or glass
blowers. Something about round, I guess.

I think nice heavy duty wood utensils with curves in three dimensions are
nicer than flimsy flat 2d ones.