Woodturning A Bowl By A Beginner

Woodturning A Bowl By A Beginner

Having decided to try something bigger than turning a wooden pen the next project for me was to try and turn a wooden bowl from a blank. Now a blank is a piece of wood  prepared for wood turning on a lathe. In this case mine was a circular piece of wood kindly donated by my brother Mike (Who knows a thing or two about these things) to get me started in wood turning. This piece of wood was approximately 6 inches in diameter and 3 inches deep. I think the wood was beech?

I decided to turn this piece by screwing a back plate to it as opposed to securing it in the chuck. Having never tried this myself I had watched many videos on Youtube on bowl turning. One such video I found helpful as a beginner as it explains in simple terms, ie A B C how to hold and use your tools. The A standing for Anchor – anchor the tool to the tool rest. B stands for Bevel, rest the bevel of the cutting face on the surface of the wood and the C stands for Cutting. He also adds a D for direction.

For a beginner like me this was a simplistic explanation of how to hold the tools. The next step I took was to watch numerous videos on bowl turning. YouTube is a great resource for a beginner in any subject and I do spend a lot of time absorbing how others do things. The below video is another one I found helpful as a beginner on how to turn a bowl. It is a bit long winded but worth it if you have little knowledge like myself.

So having done the preparation I let myself lose on the lathe. I will not bore you with more images of turning as the videos show what takes place. However the amount of wood shavings removed was very considerable.

Once the bowl was turned to shape I decided to inset a two pound coin in the centre. Having been a seller of antique silver for many years I have often seen toddy ladles with coins inset in the bottom of the bowl so I thought I might replicate the idea. I chose a special edition Charles Dickens £2 coin which shows many of his written works characters formed into the outline of his face. The colour of the coin seemed to be a nice contrast for the colours of the wooden bowl. It was finished off with two coats of friction polish and two coats of beeswax polish. Knowing the surface it would stand on I decided to add a green felt base.

I decided it would be a good idea to give it to Karen as a nut dish or bon bon dish and it now resides in our lounge. I was surprised she was quite pleased with the finished product!

Pictures of the bowl below.  Click to enlarge the images

Woodturning A Bowl By A Beginner Images