1. Home
  2. Woodturning Crafts
  3. Musing about a collaborative effort.

Musing about a collaborative effort.

I saw some acacia salad bowls in the local Target store today. They are not unattractive and they should function well. The wood is quite bland, but salad bowls shouldn't upstage the silverware and china, certainly not the salad. The finish was about on par with the salad bowls I turn for use. The walls are nicely curved and the bottoms are no longer flat discs glued to straight staved sides. The 12" X 10" (I didn't measure). were ~ $18. Smaller, individual bowls were much cheaper. I wouldn't object to being served a nicely built well dressed salad in one.

But what's a woodturner to do? I could continue to make salad bowls, but make them special with special wood or special embellishments. I could continue to make bland unadorned wood salad bowls and just enjoy the journey in making them, but the collecting, drying and prepping of the blanks for the journey isn't all that much fun anymore.

One other approach occurs to me and I wonder what you think? If you can't beat 'em, join 'em... If you're given a lemon, make lemonade. So how about a Target-Arch Collaboration?

Is there anything wrong with buying a cheap imported bowl at Dollar Store, flea market or thrift shop and re-turning it with a few added coves. beads, distresses, scorches, textures, carvings and whatever other mayhem I might choose to inflict on the poor vessel to hide its far Eastern ancestry and increase its artistic value? Is my crime so much different from buying a dried, saran wrapped, end grain coated maple blank? You think? :)

Turn to Safety, Arch Fortiter

formatting link

Reply to
Arch
Loading thread data ...

Go for it Arch! Who knows you might end up exporting the finished product back to Asia to give them something to think about :-)

Reply to
Canchippy

Jeez Arch, great idea. They do all the rough work and you add the finesse, bump the price a bunch and flog it as your own!

Hmmm...well, maybe not....I guess if the value/art added was enough it would be somewhat palatable but the idea, as tempting as it is, does give me pause. I think I'll give it a go! :) but only to see if I could improve on the first turner's effort. It would be deflating if the original was as good as it got :(

Tom

Reply to
Tom Storey

They should not be purchased for any reason or your dollars will support virtual slave wages and child labor in some third world country. That being said I still do it but I always feel bad when I think about the conditions it was likely made in.

God Bless the impoverished, Al Kyder

Arch wrote:

Reply to
Al Kyder

True, the people who make these are virtually slaves. If you buy you are rewarding their masters. If you don't buy, they don't work and starve to death.

Damned if you do, damned if you don't

Tom

Reply to
T. Dougall

It would be nearly impossible for me to live in the United States without buying something with "China" or somewhere east of Suez stamped on it. I recognize the huge socio-economic problem, but it's far more than about woodturning so I'll leave that for other forums and ask:

Why do you turn simple small salad bowls? Pleasure? rent paying sales, gifts, what?

What are your opinions re the ethics and utility of 'finishing' pre-turned bowls, imported or domestic, as your own with and without acknowledging? Think about it. Where does it end? Carried to an absurdity, should we acknowledge the timber merchant, then the tree grower, then the flea market, then the..... Why? Why not?

Turn to Safety, Arch Fortiter

formatting link

Reply to
Arch

If the item costs 3 to 10X, is there no slave making it? Profits go into the same pocket, whether 1 dolor or 10.

Reply to
Rick Samuel

We should bless their efforts to earn their way in the world by providing a market. What they receive for their efforts, though insignificant by US standards may be the only cash money in the household.

Can't live on the dole where the principle of "he who does not work does not eat" is the rule.

Reply to
George

WHY THE HELL NOT??? Maybe this is your difficulty. Maybe you mistakenly believe that salad bowls MUST be bland, therefore you are not in the quandry of dealing with bland salad bowls. You are the victim of our own perpetration.

Dan

Reply to
Dan Bollinger

.and a happy Labor Day to you too Dan. Sorry about your quandry. Not sure if you are kidding, or if I touched a nerve or if your response is a paradigm of the nonsequiter?

Whatever, you have a constitutional right to any kind of salad bowl you fancy. IIRC, separation of bowl and bland is in article I. :)

Turn to Safety, Arch Fortiter

formatting link

Reply to
Arch

Sarcasm? From Arch? Surely not! Just so you know, I went to work on Labor Day.

I have no quandry, I was clarifying yours. I am not the one with the self-limiting paradigm. Dan

PS: non sequitur

Reply to
Dan Bollinger

Dan,

In truth, I was piqued at your post and I retorted with sarcasm without thinking. I suspect this tempest in a salad bowl is likely due to the misunderstandings of the internet and we both would be ashamed to engage in it face to face. It adds nothing to rcw so let's stop it. ok?

ps, you know I can't resist; quandary. :)

Regards, Arch

Reply to
Arch

Arch, the term "collaborative" implies, to me, the informed consent of all parties concerned. I'm not sure it applies in the circumstance you delineated.

The way I see matters the original turner has no further affiliation with that bowl. To him / her it is 'finished product'. To most of the purchasers of that bowl it is also 'finished product' ... just as firewood is generally classified as being 'finished product'. But there is a group of people to whom 'finished product' is no more than an intermediate step in a larger process.

I would consider such a bowl analogous to a piece of firewood plucked from the stack that is just further along in its processing ... but not yet done. It is 'done' when I finish with it ... even if my customer decides to embellish it further.

Relax. Grab another piece of raw material and turn, turn, turn! ;-)

Bill

Reply to
Bill

LOL!

Reply to
Dan Bollinger

InspirePoint website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here. All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.