Basic Bowl Roughing By Roger Austin
A number of people have asked How do you get started in making a bowl?. I will try to answer some of the questions and give some ideas on how I turn bowls and other objects.
Please note: this is how I do it, there are many other ways, perhaps better, to turn and many people are much more proficient than I am in turning. (Maybe we can get them to write down some of their ideas!)
After hurricanes Bertha and Fran in 1996, we had more raw bowl stock than we would ever
need. Most of it went in the chipper for mulch. (We also have more mulch than we will ever
need, but that is another story!)
We can easily get basic hardwood logs at any time of year here in central North Carolina.
This is a booming area with a huge amount of building and tree services are always full
of logs and happy to give them away. When I get a log, I normally will cut basic bowl
blanks out.
I first cut a length equal to the diameter of
the log, and then cut it down the middle. This gives me two bowl blanks from the
round log.
I will orient the bowl with the grain running from side to side most of the time.
Sometimes I will have a bowl with the grain running from top to bottom, but very
rarely.
I also normally have the bottom of the bowl at the outside (bark side) of the blank
since this will give me the largest bowl from the log. This is not a fast rule though
and you will learn to read the grain to get the best looking bowl from your log.
Remember that the part that will eventually show in the finished bowl, is somewhat
difficult to see until you get rid of all that wood!
The next thing I do is cut off a little of the
edges with the grain since I won't use all the width anyway. (I will just have to
turn it away on the lathe if I don't cut it off.)
In the photo at right, I have already cut off on of the sides and am cutting off the
other.
Next, I cut off the corners so the bowl blank will
turn on my lathe. I have a template of the largest octagon that will turn on my lathe and I
use it to make sure that I don't have to fool around with chopping off corners with a
chisel so it will turn. This is an obvious thing to do, but I prepared bowl blanks for
a while without it before I forced myself to measure. I always thought I could Eyeball
the blank to fit okay and spent time chopping away bits instead of turning.
Many turners use a bandsaw to cut out a circle at this point, but I find it just as easy and less time consuming to do it this way (plus, I don't own a bandsaw!).
The next step is to mount the blank between centers
and turn it by hand to make sure that it is balanced and that the blank will miss the
bed of the lathe. A large bowl blank can make a significant noise if it hits the bed when
you turn on the lathe!
Many turners will first sink a two-pronged drive center into the blank before mounting it on the lathe, but I normally don't. I rarely have a blank come off the lathe due to the drive center not being seated properly. The reason I don't seat it is that I fool around with the blank between centers to get the orientation just the way I want it before I power on the lathe. I find that the drive center seats okay on most woods without pounding away with the mallet. NOTE: on very hard woods, I do sink the center with a mallet.
I turn a basic shape of the outside of the bowl
between centers. Note that I have turned a spigot for my chuck at this point. My goal in
this step is to get the darn wood off the blank and not to be super creative. I just want
to get it into a basic shape.
Soapbox on. I have seen some beginning turners spend hours at this point refining the shape of a green bowl when it is going to warp anyway. This is fine if you are going to turn the bowl to finished thickness and let it warp, but it you are going to turn it thick and then return it after drying, why are you worried about refining it at this point? Just get the shape and get on with it! Soapbox off.
The next step is to turn the blank around and mount
it in a chuck. You can just as easily use a face plate, but I don't know why anyone would
with the wonderful chucks available. I almost never cone out the center of the blanks unless
it is a very wonderful log. The size of cones I get from my bowls are too small to do much
with anyway. If you are turning 18 inch bowls it might be worth it to cone out the center.
Sometimes I hog out the interior using a bit tool like the Stewart System, but most of the
time I use my side-ground gouge to peel away large amounts of curly-cues. It seems to be
theraputic to me. When I hog out the interior I use the tailstock. When I use the gouge, I
won't use it, unless the blank is scary. You can try it both ways until you get comfortable.
The big problem can be the spigot that is in the chuck or how well the screws in the faceplate
are holding.
I turn down to about 1 inch (2.5 cm) thickness on the
soft maple blanks. I could go a little thinner, but I am not in much of a hurry since I
try to rough out bowls a few times a year and keep them on hand. I use a big 1 inch deep
fluted bowl gouge to get rid of the wood fast in the bottom of the bowl. I try for a
consistent thickness so the drying is consistent.
These are two of my main weapons in the fight for a
bowl blank. I use a 5/8ths inch deep fluted gouge with a thumbnail grind and the big'un
1 inch bowl gouge with a modified regular grind to get rid of the wood.
I won't begin to try to put into words how I grind the tools. It would take all the bytes
that the server gives me and you probably wouldn't get much out of it. I would suggest you
check out the John Jordan and/or David Ellsworth video tapes (or take a course) if you
want instruction on grinding these shapes.
The finished product coated with a sealer. Drying the
blanks is another article, but I normally let the blanks dry uncoated for a week or so if
they are from very wet logs. I will pile shavings around them in the shop. After the initial
drying, I will either bring them in the house where it is drier or coat them with Sealtite
and bring them in. It depends on the log and type of wood. With Maple, the wood is very
forgiving and doesn't crack too bad. With fruitwoods like apple or cherry, I take much more
care and dry them much slower. These woods will crack as soon as you turn your back.
This is the first of a series of articles on how I do things in my shop. Like I said before, it is not the definitive treatise on roughing out bowls, but it will give you a starting point if you are new. Stay tuned for more on basic turning on this site.
This article originally appeared on the web site of the Triangle Woodturners of North Carolina, October 1996.