Making my first bowl without a chuck

Hi All, welcome to the first instalment of my blog. I am aiming to do these fairly regularly, in an attempt to inspire, promote creativity and share my thoughts. I had been wanting to make a bowl since I first purchased my lathe. Upon request from one of YouTube viewers, Louis Wood, I decided I would delve into making a bowl. I was initially quite nervous about some screws and a lump of metal (face plate) safely holding my creation to the lathe. However, I quickly came to realise this is in fact a safe and tried and tested method for turning bowls. Albeit a quite old-fashioned method it still produces very satisfying results and a product that I was surprised with!

The bowl started out as a plank of American Cherry wood. I purchased it from Surrey Timbers and couldn’t wait to make something from it. I thought this would be the perfect project for it, due to it being 30 mm thick. I cut the cherry into 3 bits of wood measuring 120 mm by 120 mm. I then glued up these pieces using gorilla glue and some F-style clamps. I then left it to dry for around 24 hours before removing the clamps. If you attempt to make a bowl for the first time, I would definitely suggest cutting the corners, so you have an octagonal blank rather than a square. This not only makes it safer, it also saves you work, as you have less material to remove in order to make it round. Given the dimensions of my blank I knew this would be more of a tall bowl which would allow for an interesting appearance. The three pieces of wood made for a nice contrast in grain pattern. If I was to do this again, I would try adding a contrasting wood in the middle of the bowl for some nice aesthetics. Finally, on to the turning. I mounted the blank to a scrap piece of cherry using more glue and left this to dry. Then I screwed the 75 mm face plate to the wood and put my lathe on its slowest speed. After this, I lowered the tool rest to be just above the imaginary centre line of the blank. I then brought the tool rest forwards until it was approximately 3-5 mm away from the blank. I then tightened the tool rest and brought the tail stock up to the end of the wood. The reason for doing this was to provide a bit of support whilst profiling the bowl shape.

Onto the shaping. I used a round scraper to shape the outside bowl profile. I wanted a fairly soft profile to the bowl. As a result, I did not bring the bowl down to a sharp point at the bottom. This was my first time profiling a bowl, so it took me a lot longer than it should do. My tools are fairly cheap ones, but I have managed to achieve an extremely sharp edge on them by using a very high grit on a belt sander, a strange method of sharpening! Following this I decided to sand the outside with 120 grit followed by 180 grit sandpaper. Next came the most challenging aspect of this project which was shaping the interior of the bowl. I had never attempted anything like this before and was eager to find out how it worked. I used my round scraper to start the interior of the bowl and then drilled a 10 mm hole into the bowl, which helps when removing material. You could use a forstner bit to make this go quicker. I took shallow passes at a slight angle to remove the material and this took me around one hour, mostly due to never having done it before. I sanded the interior of the bowl from 120 grit to 180 grit sandpaper as this was the finest grit I had at the time. Ideally, I would have sanded up to 400 grit for a smoother finish, although this was not possible.

I then changed the belt speed to be at its highest belt speed for applying finish and wax to the bowl. I sanded once again with 120 grit and 180 grit and then applied some carnacrystalline wax to the outside of the bowl. This was the greatest wax I had ever used; it was brilliant. It was a Hampshire Sheen product! I applied gentle pressure to the outside of the bowl and then buffed it using a lint free cloth, although a piece of kitchen roll would have sufficed. Last on the list was to apply some food safe finish to the inside of the bowl. I wasn’t sure what I was going to use the bowl for, so I decided to go with food safe finish to be on the safe side. This was a Chestnut Products food safe finish and was also really nice. I applied this using a lint free cloth and then used a clean lint free cloth to remove the excess. Lastly, I used my tenon saw to cut the bowl free from its face plate. Then I sanded the bottom of the bowl with 120 grit up to 180 grit and applied some more food safe finish. That was the project finished, and I was so happy with the results. It was shiny and I didn’t go through the bottom of the bowl! I hope you have enjoyed reading this blog and have found it to be educational and a good read!

James

May 2020