Chippin’ Right along …
All Bowls and Prices For The APRIL 14th Sale Are Now On The BOWLS Page !
Thanks for your interest in my “Food Safe” Handmade Wooden Bread Bowls.
I bought 2 Red Maple trees in December and made 49 bowls from them. Some are absolutely gorgeous, All are very pretty and ALL are very symmetrical, simply “the best that I can do”.
30 of these bowls have been fine sanded, buffed and waxed, and all 30 are now on the “Bowls” page. They will be followed by more as soon as I am able to do so. NONE WILL BE SOLD UNTIL APRIL 14th. I want them displayed well in advance of that for you to see, so you can start making up your mind “IF” you want one, and if so, to be able to compare them to each other to see if any of them are speaking to you..
After making a bowl, it takes several weeks (sometimes months) to carefully “dry” them. It all depends on the wood, the temperature and the humidity.
As of April 14th I will have what is dried and finished “For Sale” on the BOWLS Page.
For your “Best Chance” to get one … simply send me an email LATE ON THE DAY BEFORE THE SALE – list all the bowls that you would be happy with (in order of preference) and let me know how many (total) you’d like. BE SURE TO INCLUDE THE ADDESS THE BOWL WILL BE SHIPPED TO. I need to know where it’s going because all bowls with a “ship to” address in North Carolina – will have sales tax added for the county they’re shipped to. There is NO SALES TAX FOR ANY OTER STATE.
I PAY All SHIPPING in the lower 48 states (no international sales!). The quality of my bowls is the best you will find anywhere. Every bowl I sell has been sanded to at least 220 grit smooth, many to 400, and all have been buffed and polished.
“Thank YOU” to the many people who have offered up prayers on my behalf. It really means a lot !!!
Old age and health issues are really slowing me up, so there may not be many more bowls made by me as my health continues to go downhill.
Why Does Someone Make Doughbowls?
There’s a bunch of doughbowl makers around. But I don’t think there’s many in the USA that make them simply “for the money”. At 1st glance they seem awfully high priced. That’s one reason I learned to make them – I wanted my wife to have one but I couldn’t afford to buy one. But making them as a business puts Uncle Sam right squarely in your back pocket. Out of every dollar I take in – 28% goes to State & Federal Income taxes, Social Security and Medicare… 22% goes to my business (sand paper, buying trees, food safe mineral oil, property taxes and upkeep of the shop and display buildings, internet access and keeping up this website, power, etc. and all supplies). Plus I am paying the shipping in the lower 48 states. East coast averages around $38 per bowl – west coat up to $69.75 (Washington state). If you try and chip out a bowl you’ll expect to put 10 or more hours in it, them I sand and buff my bowls (another couple of hours)… do the math. A $300 bowl would put less than half that in your pocket for 10-14 hours of work … you get minimum wage for all your efforts. We do it because we’re hooked on the beauty! Seeing what GOD alone put there for me to uncover. For those who just do it for the money … that quickly shows up in the quality of their work (or the lack there-of).
A Special Christmas Present
The Christmas of ’24 – I wanted to do something special for my granddaughter. She had worked hard getting her nursing degree and we are so proud of her. She’s a person that really holds on to memories and family is everything to her.
When she was small, she loved to play in the leaves each fall. My wife Nancy and I would rake up all the leaves from a big maple in our front yard and go over near the woods and gather even more from all the trees that surround our yard to make her a nice big pile. The two dogs that we had at the time “Sadie and Daisy” would join in the fun and all three of them would have a great time playing in the leaves.
In May of 2022 a tornado tore up several houses just down the road from us. It also uprooted or broke off over 60 big oaks, maples and other trees around our house and destroyed a building I had recently built. I often wondered how the big maple in our yard seemed fine with no missing limbs when almost all others suffered damage or were broken up. In the summer of 2023 after my first surgery of the year for cancer, I was sitting under the tree watching the Purple Martins flying around the houses we have for them and looked up at the tree admiring its beauty. I was shocked to notice a large crack in the trunk where it split into two trunks. The tornado had damaged the tree after all and if it split further, it would be on our house. I had a tree company come cut all the limbs off of it – leaving only the trunk so that I could preserve it until fall so I wouldn’t lose the log.
I cut it down in November after the sap went down and made several nice bowls out of it. These were special because I actually planted the maple when it was very small, and here I was cutting it down to make bowls from it and using one of these bowls as a canvas to burn a picture of my granddaughter Katie and the dogs – playing in the leaves beneath the very tree that the bowl was made of.
