Step by step

Yesterday as I was sorting boards out in preparation to glue them together into blanks, the idea came to me to show a little bit of a step-by-step of how I prepare and turn the majority of my bowls.

First, we need a board:
That should work. I got some more cedar from one of my friends at work, and we planed it down smooth and cut it into 8 inch squares. When I laminate boards together for cross-grain bowls, I start by lining all the pieces up the same way they were cut out of the board. This helps the grain to line up and flow with an uninterrupted look around the outside of the bowl. The straighter the grain is, the better the effect, but the more figured the grain, the more interesting the look.

I figure out which end I want to be the top of the bowl, and which one the bottom. Most of the time, I try to have the more solid and straight pieces at the top to add strength to the rim of the bowl, with figured and cracked pieces at the bottom, so the larger mass of wood there will help keep it together. It doesn't always work out that way. But, once I've decided, I start at the end that I want to be the top, and pick that piece up, and set it down on the next one. Then pick those two up, and set them on the next one, and work down accordingly, until it looks like this:
Looking at the end grain of the boards, it looks like it'll be a nice flowy piece. Once I'm happy with it, I mark the boards in a way that will help me remember how to orient them with the rest, and start gluing. I try to do one glue joint at a time, which helps keep the glue lines narrow. For this block as well, I'm also using a jig to line the two boards being joined with each other as well. It cuts down on the frustration of having the two boards slide around as you're trying to clamp them together.
Once the glue is set enough, (the glue I use has a clamp time of 30 minutes, though I wait an hour or more) I laminate the next board on, until I have the entire stack glued together. Then, I find the center, and glue on my faceplate block. That's so that when I mount the faceplate on the bowl blank, the screws are going into the cheap scrap wood, letting me use more of the project wood for the finished bowl.
In the picture, the big stack is Spanish Cedar, and the small single board is cherry. Once the glue dries fully, about 24 hours, I take the blanks out to the lathe, cut the corners off to make them octagons, (much faster and less scary than roughing out the squares) and start turning! Hopefully these will get turned on Sunday.

In progress

Today was lathe day. I got to try my hand at turning something a bit taller than I usually do, as well as turning one of a few pieces of walnut I've acquired.

Before:


And middle:

Just need to sand them and finish them.

A surprise for family

This weekend I went to Meadview for a fun filled weekend of motorcycle riding and sightseeing, and overall general vacationing. I tagged along with TC and Alex, and his sister, and we all stayed at their grandparents place. They've kind of adopted me, which is cool, and makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside.

Anyways, I decided it would be cool to make a bowl for them, as sort of a thank you. Rather than giving it to them in person, though, I devised a scheme, which everyone helped out on. I decided to plant the bowl somewhere while we were getting ready to leave, in hopes they wouldn't find it until we were all gone, so it would be a surprise.

Fun, yeah?

It was incredibly hard to keep it hidden until the last moment when I put it onto their coffee table, at which point, it was incredibly hard to hide my excitement. I was incredibly giddy riding away.

Anyways, the bowl:




When I started finishing the bowl, I did not like it. I thought the wood rot cavities combined with the bold grain made it too busy looking and overwhelming. My sister helped convince me to stick with it and finish it, and I figured if I still didn't like it, I'd bring another bowl turned from a similar piece of wood with less rot, and let everyone else decide. But once I put the gloss finish on it, all my reservations disappeared. I liked it, and was sure everyone else would, too. And they did.

The bowl is turned from my last piece of Spanish Cedar lumber, and was the piece I was most scared of turning, because it had so many voids in it from the rot. As such, the inside of the bowl isn't sanded as well as I usually try to do, and still has some turning lines in it. It is hard to tell, but the rim is interrupted in two spots by a long void, which made sanding even more difficult. It is 7 1/8 inches in diameter by 1 3/4 inches tall, finished with danish oil with a polyurethane gloss topcoat.

Lesson being: Don't stop working on something because you don't like it yet. Sometimes, it ends up being one of your favorite pieces by the time you're done.