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Revelstoke bowl turner expanding to bigger markets

Corin Flood turns hundreds of bowls a year in his back yard shop

Fresh out of high school in the late 80s Corin Flood did a work term in the United Kingdom with a professional turner.

Years later after working in furniture production and building stores for Mountain Equiment Coop, Flood returned to bowl making.

“There was kind of this legacy from that [work term],” he said. “It wasn’t hard to go back.”

Flood and his family moved to Revelstoke in 1997. At the time Mountain Equipment Coop had a remote work policy and the real estate price was right in Revelstoke.

“I worked as staff for ten years and then I have been working on contract for the 11 years,” Flood said.

The job as well as others with Arc’teryx, Salomon and Icebreaker had Flood travelling a lot.

“It is pretty regular,” he said. “Every other week I am out of town.”

But now, as a regular at both the Revelstoke Farmer’s Market and other markets around B.C. and Alberta, Flood continues his travels.

He decided to try and make a living wood working seven or eight years ago.

“Furniture takes a lot of time, and this takes less time,” he said with a laugh.

He was also interested in usuing local materials and doing something that was “conatined in the community.”

So he began turning birch wood, the only hardwood that is indigenous to the area, into bowls.

“Unfortunatley it is dying off so I have been looking for other sources of material,” he said.

In the beginning the Revelstoke Farmer’s Market was the only place Flood was selling his bowls, because he couldn’t keep making them if he wasn’t selling them.

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“For me, the fact that somebody wants to buy it is sort of the reason for doing it,” he said.

However, over the last two years he has been growing sales out of town.

Right now is the slow season for Flood and he is cooking his latest batch of bowls in a newly constructed kiln in his basement.

He is hoping that the bowls will dry in six weeks instead of three months, making the process even more efficient.

Beside the wall of shelves that house hundreds of bowls waiting for their turn in the kiln, is a photography set up.

Flood not only halls and cuts the logs, does a rough turn, a finished turn and market preparation, he also does his own marketing, which includes photos for Instagram.

“I like the craft aspect of it, and I do regard this as functional,” Flood said of his work.

He is on track to make 4-500 bowls this year.


 

@JDoll_Revy
jocelyn.doll@revelstokereview.com

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