Bruce Perry Inspired piece

From the March turning meeting I was very inspired by Bruce's demo on winged bowls. I really liked the flow and curve of the pieces he demo'd plus the look of the small vessel sitting on the piece. So I gave it a whirl. Below is a piece that I turned one evening in a couple of hours. It started off as an approx 3" thick 8" wide, and 13" long piece of aspen my dad found in some rough cut timber.

I mounted it off center on the lathe. I started by turning the bottom flow of the piece along with a tennon for me to mount this into a chuck. I was then able to reverse the piece and hold the tennon with my oneway chuck. I then progressed inwards from the outer wing working to form the piece's wave similar to what I had outlined on the bottom. I did this portion in steps to ensure that I didn't make any portion to weak to support the tension of the turning on the outer edges. As I got to the center, I started to outline the vessel and give it shape. The hardest part was defining the bottom of the vessel. Due to where the wings of the piece are and the angle to get the bottom, this posed some major problems I'm still working on. Bruce had used some custom tools he ground just for this purpose. Basically they were right angle bent tools for scraping and a pointed tool to get into the bottom corner. I then removed the tailstock and hollowed out the vessel. This proved to be the easiest of the project. I then did a LOT of sanding. Both with the lathe on, and with it off. The vessel was mainly done with the piece spinning, everything else very carefully with the lathe off. I then turned a jam chuck, re-mounted the vessel inside the jam chuck and cleaned up the bottom. It was then I realized that the shape of under the vessel should have been rounded not done like a normal bowl or vessel bottom. I hope you enjoy...