The Staples Superbowl – $90
Staples Superbowl View #1 - A total of 39 staples!
Sometimes you find funny things when you start spinning and cutting a piece of wood on the lathe. You get to see some of the tree from the inside out. You can find bark buried deep in the wood’s structure that never saw the light of day. Sometimes you can even find a limb that never quite popped out of the trunk as a limb. All this and more is what I found in this little piece of wood.
This is from a Beech that was split in a storm. I thought the whole tree had fallen when I arrived with my chainsaw, but really, the main part of the tree had split and the massive logs were really limbs! Now the old time woodturners tell me that the checking and cracking in a limb, as compared to the tree’s trunk is sometimes exponentially more severe. And its true!
I centered the limb on the lathe and turned this one out and left the interior limb I discovered intact. So I had to cut the piece of little thicker than normal so as not to blow out the side with this added “feature”. That meant more severe cracking than I was used to, and coupled with the fact that wood in the limbs have a lot more tension in them, this piece was in for a wild ride as it dried.
The back of Frankenstein's head!
I wanted the piece to have that sort of wobbly round bottom to it. I put a random series of cuts long the side to get it a little more character. So I carefully finished it off, sanded it out to 600 grit, gave it a buffing of wax and then watched it transform before my eyes as it dried. Cracks and splits like you wouldn’t believe. I took a picture of the bottom after I inserted a series of staples and it looks like the back of Frankenstein’s head!
Staples Superbowl Tree Limb Inclusion
Oh1 And don’t forget the side with the limb trying to stick out.
Since the wood has such a light color and nice grain pattern, I left it with a natural finish and just a buffing of wax. But to enhance the cracks visually, I took out my Detail Master and inserted a blade heated to 1,000-degrees into the splits and burned the cracks, making them a dominate feature. I also burned around the 39 staples I inserted to give them a little more of an organic look. I just about ran out of staples. This one would never make it through a metal detector at the airport.
This one I really thought would crack completely in half before I was finished hammering in all of the staples because I had to use a ball peen hammer, but she survived the ordeal. Beaten but not broken, making this truly a Superbowl!
Piece measures 5.25 x 5.25. 
Staples Superbowl Side View - Beaten but not Broken
