The Pillaiyar Kulam gave their news today. There was an unusual order recently from a Hindu in Texas for 30 copies of What is Hinduism and another Hindu order 500 copies of the 10 questions booklet. Our educational materials are becoming more and more popular.

Lakshmi, Velliachhi and Uma Arunachalam are here on a pilgrimage from three different places in the US.

Lakshmi and Vellachi were here years ago and met Gurudeva in 1994 and then later in 2001. They say their meetings with Gurudeva changed their lives.

The three sisters have not all been in the same place at the same time for many years and it was a joyous reunion. When they got off the place yesterday afternoon they came straight to the temple.

They brought a gift of a beautiful painting of Lord Nataraja in Chidambaram.

The air was filled with the sweet all-pervading aroma of camphor wood last retreat, radiating out from the new Powermatic Lathe for a half mile in all directions. The lathe is the newest addition to the monastery wood shop, thanks to the generosity of a kind benefactor! At 600 pounds, it is rock solid, and state-of-the art in its range.

After turning a number of smaller pieces these past few weeks, we stepped up to a seriously large chunk of wood, a clear piece of camphor from a log we skipped over during our last milling of boards. Lucky for us today that we left it intact! Previous turnings have been in mango and monkeypod, which are both great species for bowls, especially the mango.

Here we see the big block after some rough turning on the outside.

More work done on the outside.
Next we make a foot on the base to be held in the chuck when we turn the bowl around to hollow the inside.

Here we have begun roughing out the inside.

In this phase we leave the walls of the bowl about 1″ thick, since this is green (wet) wood.

We now set aside the rough-turned piece to dry for a few months. During that time it will change shape as it dries. Then we will put it back on the lathe, true it up again and bring it to completion, with walls about 1/2″ thick.

We paint the end-grain areas with a wax emulsion called Anchor Seal to slow down the drying on those sections, which will naturally dry faster than the face grain. The more evenly the wood dries, the less the piece will change in shape. This piece planned as a salad bowl for the kitchen. Now, where’s the next piece to put on the lathe? What fun! And very useful!