Lots of Bowls

A selection of bowls, all turned on the lathe. There’s something magical about making a bowl. Most other making needs measurements, accuracy, and thinking ahead. While you certainly can bring all those thoughts to making a bowl, you don’t have to. You can just get a bit of wood - a log, some glued-up offcuts, a properly prepared blank - stick it on the lathe, and begin. Bring the chisel to the workpiece, start cutting, and be guided by your intuition. If you make a mistake, or dislike the shape, it doesn’t really matter most of the time: you can just turn down the bowl to fix it. It’ll be a little smaller, but that’s ok. There’s a freedom and fluidity to it that can be a real joy. Sometimes, you don’t find the shape you want, and just end up with a pile of shavings on the floor. From time to time, that’s ok too.

Processes

These bowls are all turned on the lathe, a Killinger 1450SE. I usually mount the wood using a screw chuck through the top face, turn a mortice on the opposite face and the outside shape, and then re-mount the work on a 4-jaw chuck using the mortice before hollowing out the inside. They’re then sanded on the lathe as well, before applying finish.

Some of these are turned green (ie, wet) which means that as they dry their shape changes, creating new bends, or bringing the bowl out of round. This is a lovely thing to watch over the first few months after turning, to see what the material does.