Sunday, November 14, 2010

Laminated wooden bowl

I made this bowl by a method that I have not previously tried. The idea is to make a flat laminated board of contrasting woods, then cut rings out of the board and laminate the rings into a stacked shape. This link describes the method for the bowl in the place setting

http://www.shopsmith.com/ownersite/proj_articles/placesetting/

I rotated each ring 45* with respect to the ring below it. This is good since the ring seams do not line up, and the bowl has a more wild, interesting pattern.

I am not good at turning feet on bowls, since I do not have a very good chucking system on my lathe, and don't get much practice with turning feet. Instead, once I cut the bowl off the lathe (or remove it from the drive plate), I just sand the bottom flat, and add some felt to cover the surface.

2 comments:

  1. I really like that. I would think cutting the rings on an angle free hand is pretty tough. The instructions like indicates this could be done with a bandsaw. How is that possible? Do you have a shopsmith, or are you using dedicated tools? Just curious. I would probably cut these on a scroll saw to minimize the number of pilot holes, but even then each ring has to be sanded or reduced in someway to make the circumference uniform, no?

    ReplyDelete
  2. Glenn, good question. I cut my initial plank of wood in half before cutting the rings. So, I actually ended up with two half-rings for each level of the bowl. This eliminates the need for pilot holes, and allows the half-rings to be cut on a bandsaw. I also compensated for saw kerf so the resulting half-rings would have the same center point. After the glue-up was done, I mounted the bowl on a wood lathe and turned it smooth. You are right, the rings don't line up perfectly, and a fair amount of material has to removed on the lathe. Good luck

    ReplyDelete