Olive Burl Hybrid Bowl

This olive burl bowl came from a particularly gnarly piece of olive burl, and it could be considered an end-grain bowl, which means that the grain consistently runs vertically relative to the bowl. While being a beautiful wood species, olive, and especially olive burl, is notorious for developing stress fractures and checks, sometimes long after the tooling and finishing has occurred. This piece is no different, and therefore should be considered delicate and for decorative purposes only. I don’t recommend using this bowl for food contact as it was stabilized with epoxy, but it is finished with a food-grade finish. As the bowl acclimates to its new environment, it can develop stress cracks, which should be considered a feature of the species rather than a drawback. However, this fact alone could be reason enough to use this bowl for decorative purposes only. As can be seen in the last picture, since finishing this bowl, new stress cracks appeared on the bottom of the bowl after bringing the piece home from the shop. This bowl measures approximately 7.6 inches wide and 3 inches tall and was stabilized with black epoxy.