Making A Bowl

There are multiple finished bowls on this site, sometimes including a description of the wood used to make the bowl and occasionally a commentary about the process in terms of its relative difficulty.  But what I haven’t done, until now, is to explain with photos and text what goes into making a standard bowl or dish on the lathe.  So, here goes.

Selecting Your Material

The first step is to select your material.  This probably seems obvious but you could make a bowl out of literally hundreds of different materials, or in this case, species of wood.  Every wood you can find or buy will work differently, and frankly, even two pieces of, say walnut, will work differently from one another.  But within some broad parameters walnut will be walnut compared to say, cedar or snakewood.  There are differences in relative hardness, degrees of difficulty, cost of materials, and relative ease of working with the material.  I happen to have a great deal of Claro Walnut lying about, it is well seasoned and dry, and walnut is relatively reasonable to work with.  All of these factors make it a good choice for today’s project.

Claro Walnut and Its Uses

Claro Walnut is scientifically known as Juglans hindsii.  Claro Walnut is a distinct species different from Eastern Black Walnut, the wood more commonly meant when referring to walnut furniture or cabinetry.  Juglans hindsii is commonly found in northern and central California, as opposed to the eastern United States and Canada for other species of walnut used in furniture manufacturing.

While the wood is used, generally in small quantities, in the manufacture of fine furniture, gun stocks, and knife handles, it is also used in slab form to make large natural-top tables.

However, the most economically important use of the species is agricultural, not decorative.  The root stock is the most commercially important of its kind for the growth of “English” walnut orchards in the United States and worldwide.  It is commercially important as a rootstock for English walnut orchards all over the world.  Some woodworkers have even taken advantage of this by making the change in color of the wood, between the dark root stock and the lighter upper tree, a feature of their work.  Claro Walnut is endangered in the wild, with possibly only a few native stands remaining.  This particular Claro Walnut was harvested in Chico, California from farmed trees.

Deciding Which Side Is Top and Which Is Bottom

In the case of this particular “blank,” the wood is already cut to roughly round shape on the bandsaw.  The blank could have been square, or rectangular, or it could have been a rough cut from a log.  All are valid blanks; this one just happens to have been pre-cut.  Now that I have selected the “blank” that I want to use from my stock I have to choose which side will be top and which will be bottom.  I will consider any defects that can be cut out from the top side, and I will also consider any visible figure or grain that I want to preserve or which I want to highlight by choosing one orientation over another.  It is always possible that I will encounter unexpected voids or other defects in the wood once I start working with it and at this stage there is really nothing I can do about that possibility aside from accepting it.

Mount the Face Plate

Having decided which side will be the top, I screw in a face plate with up to 8 wood screws.  The face plate is placed on center, which is determined with a compass.  Once the piece is mounted, center can be found simply by placing a pen or pencil lightly against the spinning blank.  The instrument will automatically seek and mark center.  The face plated piece is mounted on the lathe and off we go.

Roughing the Blank

The first tool I will use is called a roughing gouge.  As the name implies, this tool will rough the wood down to a rounded shape, but it won’t be suitable for making finish cuts.  The tool is heavy and sharp and it is also one of my most frequently used items.  There are newer, fancier, roughing tools on the market and perhaps someday I will experiment with one of them, but for now this tool meets my needs.

The blank will rough down pretty quickly, although I am working at a relatively slow RPM of 840.  Any higher than that and I would pull my arm off from the vibratory force of the roughing process.  Depending on how un-round your blank is and how hard the wood you are working with, roughing a blank is indeed rough work!

I know the roughing process is complete in several ways.  The appearance of the cut surface will change to a smoother, more even appearance once the roughing is completed, with all areas of the circle being cut equally.  In the beginning, only the “high” points will show tool marks.  Also, viewing the gap between the tool rest and the wood will give one a clue: if the amount of space changes as you manually rotate the blank (with the lathe motor off) then the blank isn’t round.  And finally, I had also inscribed a perfect circle using the center of the blank and a compass prior to starting the turning, so I knew that when I met, or cut past, that line I was good and round.

I may also choose at this point to shape some of the outside of the blank, in this case adding a slight indentation to the bottom of the piece so that it doesn’t slope straight down all the way to the base.  This creates a bit of a profile on the piece.

Creating the Rear Tenon

The next thing I have to do is to prepare the rear of the blank, which is currently facing out, for attachment to the chuck.  I will do this by inscribing a mark in pencil that is the same size as the closed jaws of the chuck, and then using a parting tool to cut a channel into the wood that is the same size.  At that point, with the channel marked, I will remove the rest of the wood from the bottom of the blank in order to create a tenon, or a jutting out section of wood in the center of the bottom of the bowl that will allow the chuck to grip tightly for the work to come.

Hollowing the Center of the Blank

Now that the bowl is reversed, mounted with the face out, I can use a Forstner bit in a drill head on the tail stock of the lathe to quickly cut out the center of the bowl blank.  I could use traditional lathe tools to have the same general effect, but this method is faster and easier for the same result.

In this case, I cut down almost an inch into the center of the top of the bowl blank.  This has exposed some imperfections in the wood that I will have to be careful about to avoid catching and tear outs, which is exactly what it sounds like: catching a tool in an imperfection and having the blank simply tear apart from the force.

The primary tools I will use to remove wood from the center of the bowl are shown here.

They are, from top to bottom, a ½ inch round nose scraper, a 1 inch round nose scraper, and a square scraper.  Again, the names of lathe tools give you a good idea of what they will do.  These tools will scrape wood away and leave a reasonable surface.  The round nose tools will leave a rounded edge behind, whereas the square nose will leave a straight edge behind, making it very useful for 90 degree angle bottoms on bowls and boxes, or for finishing the bottoms of bowl to make them very flat.  I may also use bowl gouges which will remove wood much faster than scrapers, but I am hesitant to use them heavily in this case because of the imperfections the higher risk of catching a gouge as opposed to a scraper.

Now the piece looks more like a bowl in that the center is removed and the sides slope upwards to the rim.  As you can see, the cut is pretty rough on the end grain sections of the turning and the imperfections are also more exposed now.

Several of the imperfections will actually prove to travel completely through the finished piece, meaning that this bowl will not hold water when finished, but I think the effect it leaves is rather artistic and unique.  The bowl will be perfect in its imperfection, and I think more attractive than a perfect specimen.  This is strictly a matter of opinion of course so feel free to disagree.

Finish Sanding the Bowl

I will sand the bowl extensively using a sanding 2 inch sanding disc attached to a rotary drill.  With the lathe turned on, the drill works in opposition to the rotation of the wood which allows the sandpaper discs to cut much faster, making the clean-up much faster and easier, especially on the cross grain areas both on the exterior and the interior of the bowl form.  Personally, I start with a 60 grit paper, which is pretty rough, to smooth out all the cut marks, then I progress through at least nine more grits until I finish sand with 800 grit paper, which leaves a very glossy and fine surface.

Finish Coating the Bowl

In some cases bowls need nothing more than a nice coat of wax to bring out the wood’s natural beauty.  In the case of walnut, while I think the wood is lovely as is, I almost always apply a light coating of Watco Danish Oil in a natural finish, which isn’t designed to darken the wood with a stain per se, although the treatment will leave the wood darker than when I started.  The oil moisturizes and helps protect the wood as well as beautifying it.  You can see the difference in the end result between no oil and having the oil applied.

Watco Oil contains mostly linseed and other vegetable oils along with some resins, varnish, and other components.  It soaks in and helps seal the wood but it isn’t overly glossy when it dries and it takes a top coat of wax quite beautifully.  Because the finish soaks into the wood, it is less likely to scratch than a non-penetrative coating.  There are variations that are colored, but for walnut I simply use the natural oil with no colorants at all.

Cole Jaws and Finishing the Rear of the Bowl

The bowl looks pretty nice at this point I think, until you turn it over that is and discover that the rear of the piece is still completely rough shaped, not sanded, nor finished in any way.  Problem is, how am I going to mount the bowl in reverse at this point with a hollow interior and a finished edge?

The answer is to use the Cole Jaws on the standard chuck.

These expandable jaws with cushioned grips will hold the piece face in, securely but gently, without marring the finished surface.  The only caution here is to avoid applying too much pressure to particularly thin edged pieces to avoid heartbreak, speaking from experience.  Use the pressure you need and nothing more!

This configuration allows me to turn off the tenon foot, clean up and flatten the bottom to ensure that the piece will not wobble or rock when on a flat surface, as well as providing access for sanding and finishing.

Final Polishing the Bowl

But still I am not done!  I really like a hard and shiny finish on a bowl and I have just the material and tools to accomplish that.  I use a Beale Buffer System which incorporates three wheels made of slightly different materials to accomplish three polishing tasks without multiple wheel changes.

The first wheel is loaded with Red Tripoli compound, the second is loaded with White Diamond, and the final wheel is loaded with carnauba wax, a hard vegetable wax from Brazil.

By running these wheels at fairly high speed and holding, TIGHTLY HOLDING, the finished bowl beneath each wheel in turn, I achieve a brilliant polish and shine.  For a shallow bowl such as this one, I could probably polish the interior with the larger wheels, but that would have prevented me from using a new toy purchased at the Louisville, Kentucky location of Woodcraft, which are wheels purposely designed to polish and shine the interior of bowls, goblets, and other hollow forms.  The system comes with an optional extension piece for really deep forms.

Now that I have polished the piece, the only thing left to do is to burn my name into the bottom of the piece with my branding iron so that no one else can lay claim to my work, not that anyone in his or her right mind would want to claim jump on my novice pieces!

Finally Finished!

That is pretty much the process from start to finish.  I realize now that I should have taken some more intermediate process photos, but honestly, once the turning starts I tend to be pretty focused and single minded so I forgot to stop and photograph what to me is becoming second nature and obvious.  I was so absorbed that I didn’t even notice the rip-roaring thunderstorm at work outside the house, so all in all it was a great project day!