Old sayings and days 10,11 and 12 of my summer of turning

RSS

Natural Edge York Gum Burl Bottle Stopper

In my last couple of posts, I mentioned that I have been sick. Sick enough that for days 10 and 11 of my summer of turning there wasn’t any turning. So I didn’t post either. So it’s day 12 and I’m starting to feel better. Now to catch up on orders that I’ve fallen behind on.

Old sayings and their meanings

During my high school years, I was lucky enough to have three very good English teachers, Ms. Larrabee, Mrs. Conant and Mr. Nielsen. At the time I thought they were there only to torture me with the likes of Dickens, Hemingway, Poe, Shakespeare, and Steinbeck to name a few of the authors we had to read. I mean did I really care what “wherefore art thou, Romeo” meant? By the way, it would be “Romeo, why are you a Montague” in today’s language and not “where are you, Romeo”. Anyway from these three teachers, I learned my love of the English language and reading. The three would never accept anything but our best even when some of us may have chaffed against doing just that. To this day I like to know what the meanings of some of the phrases we use are and where they may have come from. Let’s take Bite the bullet for example. Before there was anesthetics, people were often asked to bite down on something during surgery to help them get through the pain. Often times if you were a soldier you would be given a bullet and be told to bite the bullet during surgery. Now you know why John Wayne often bit down on something when they were fixing him up after being wounded in all his old movies.

Today’s bottle stopper

Today’s stopper is made from natural edge York Gum Burl. This piece of York Gum Burl came from Australia. I turned it leaving the natural edge at the top of the stopper. Natural edge is often times called bark edge or live edge. In this particular stopper the natural edge slants from the back to the front. One of the characteristics of York Gum Burl is that it has fantastic figure running through the wood. If you would like to see more pictures and find out more about the stopper you can visit my Dailey Woodworking site by clicking here or on my Etsy store by clicking here.

Don’t forget to sign up for our Dailey Woodworking newsletter by going here.