BREAD BOWL

I saw this method for making a bowl from a flat board. This really intrigued me because of being able to make a bowl without wasting all of the wood that normally gets cut out from the inside of the bowl.

You can make a bowl like this from any flat board. I decided to use 10 different types of wood to make my flat board. I glued two halves of 5 strips each.

Then I clamped the two halves together so that I could draw circles where I needed to make my cuts.

I'll try to explain how I got my dimensions for drawing my circles.

First off I drew the shape that I wanted for my bowl, on some graph paper.

I started off planning to use 1/2" thick wood, and having 3/8" thick walls on the bowl. Using a trigonometry table, that gave me a 36° for the bowl sides.

After drawing it out, I realized that with losing 1/8" from the kerf of the bandsaw blade, and figuring that I would lose another 1/8" at least when turning it on the lathe, that this wasn't going to work.

I liked the looks of the 36°, so I knew I would have to make the thickness of the bowl's walls bigger.

So I considered making the walls 5/8" (OPP) thick. That meant I would need the board to be 7/8" (ADJ) thick.

I had some 3/4" (ADJ) thick wood already, so using the formula OPP = TAN x ADJ, I found that I could use the 3/4" boards which would give me a 9/16" (OPP) thick wall on the bowl. I felt that was doable.

To complicate things even more, I wanted to curve the walls of the bowl.

So by using the trigonometry tables again, I refigured the thickness of the walls for a different angle for each cut.

I started out at 36°for my first cut. Then I increased each cut by 5°.

Afterwards I realized the that the maximum that I could tilt my bandsaw was 47.5°. but it worked out just fine. I just turned the bottom of the bowl a little bit more on the lathe.

Here are some of the steps in making this bowl.

This is what the rings look like, temporarily stacked up, after making all the cuts on the bandsaw.

After cutting all the ring halves, you need to glue the halves together.

After the rings are glued up, then start stacking the rings into the bowl shape. I used acetone to wipe down the edges of the exotic woods before applying the glue. The acetone dries up the oil in the wood, so that the glue will adhere better.

This is a picture of how I made sure that I had the lathe's faceplate centered on the bowl. I had a short shaft for spinning the faceplate on. I could spin the bowl beside the square, to make sure the bowl stayed even with the square.

I'm ready for turning now.

Here's what the inside looks like, before turning.

This is a top view of the finished bowl.

I realize that this is a lot to absorb. My advise is to practice with a plain board at least 1 1/4" thick, to try this method out for the first time. As you make it, it will all make sense eventually.

That's what I did with this "Fruit Bowl" that I made here. On this one I didn't go the extra mile to make the curved walls.

Here are a few of the steps on making this bowl.

I run the rings through the drum sander before stacking them up.

This is my version of a glue press.

Originally I wanted to make this bowl with a square top. But there was too much vibration on the lathe, so I had to cut the corners off.

After removing the live end support, there was still considerable vibration, so I had to use the "Steady Rest" to help support this large bowl. I think the mixtures of different types of wood caused the weight to be off balance.

This is how I cut off my turnings, from the lathe support block.