Whether you’re a beginner or an experienced woodturner, you have probably turned a wooden bowls or two. If you haven’t, now is the time to turn a bowl! Bowls are a woodturner’s bread and butter and are often the first project a woodturner attempts when they begin faceplate turning (as opposed to spindle turning). This guide takes you through the logistics of turning bowls of all different shapes, sizes, and dimensions.
The first bowl most woodturners attempt is circular, round-rimmed, and of average depth; think of a standard cereal bowl. Turning a basic bowl helps beginning woodturners become acquainted with their lathe and other tools. Even experienced woodturners often use this type of project to clear out any cobwebs (mental or literal) after a time away from the lathe, and basic bowls make great gifts for any occasion.
Before you begin turning a wood bowl, you will need to center the blank so that you know what size your bowl will be. To prepare your blank, have a pencil and a compass on hand.
Start with a square wood blank. Draw a line from one corner to the opposite corner. Then, do the same for the other two corners, making an “x” in the middle of the blank. The crossing of the two lines should be the middle of the blank.
Next, take your compass and put the pointed leg on the intersection where the lines cross. Draw a circle, making sure that your pencil touches the face of the wood for the entirety of the rotation. If your pencil slips off one side, shorten the angle of the compass and re-draw your circle. If you do not, your bowl will be lopsided.
Also, it is important that you are aware of the size of your lathe. If your bowl blank is too big to turn in the space between your lathe’s chuck and the lathe bed, you will need to reduce the size of your blank by cutting it with a saw before mounting it on the lathe. Make sure to center your blank after you have made sure its size fits your lathe, not before.
Once you have your bowl marked out, you will need to cut off the excess wood with a saw. If you have a bandsaw, you can cut your blank into a cylinder, following the circle you just drew. If you are using hand saw, cut the blank into an octagon by removing the corners of the blank.
Preparing the wood in this way makes it easier to turn the blank into a bowl, as you will not need to do as much roughing out of the bowl with a bowl gouge.
When mounting a bowl blank to the lathe, a woodturner has three options: a faceplate, a spur chuck, or a screw chuck. See our previous blog post for a discussion of each of these types of mounting techniques. Any of these mounting techniques is appropriate for bowl-turning, but using a faceplate is probably most common and holds the blank most securely. Most lathes come with a faceplate.
Note: if you are using a faceplate, it is a good idea to measure the screws you are using. This will be important information in Shaping the Bowl step.
The main thing to keep in mind is that the blank will (usually) be mounted in a side-grain orientation, as if the tree your blank came from were parallel to the floor.
A woodturner could mount the blank the other way, as if the tree were growing from the floor, but this would result in an end-grain bowl. End-grain bowls are possible to make, but are more prone to splitting and cracking, and are more difficult to turn. Try this only if you are in the mood for a challenge!
However you choose to mount your bowl blank, make sure it is fastened securely and that there is enough room for the blank to turn easily. Move your tool rest so that it is in the correct place for you to balance your tools so that they just reach the outside of the blank at or above the center point. It is a good idea to manually turn the blank so that you can check that nothing else will touch the blank once you turn the lathe on.
Once you have your bowl blank mounted, it’s time to start turning. The first step when turning a wood bowl is to “true” the blank to ensure that the blank is a perfect cylinder. This will help maintain the balance of the blank and ensure that the bowl will be perfectly round.
To true the blank, use a bowl gouge. Set it on the tool rest and make sure the gouge is positioned so that is parallel to the floor, and it touches the center of the blank (or slightly above.)
Turn the lathe on and increase the speed. If you encounter a slight vibration in the blank, decrease the speed again until the blank turns smoothly. Bowl-turning speeds will be slower than spindle-turning speeds because you are often working with a larger wood blank, so don’t exceed 800 rpms. As always, if a slower speed feels more comfortable to you, decrease the speed a little more.
It is a good idea to stand somewhat to the left of the blank and to angle your gouge to the right so that it is pointed away from you. Slide your bowl gouge left to right along the tool rest. The first few cuts may be somewhat bumpy but keep your gouge stable and don’t worry about getting things perfect at the outset.
Once you reach the right edge of the tool rest, pull your gouge back and return it to the left side. As your gouge meets the blank, you will hear the sound of wood being shaved off. If you used a bandsaw to cut the blank, it will not be long until your blank is perfectly smooth. If you used a handsaw, it will take a bit longer. Don’t stop until your blank is as smooth as you want your bowl to be.
After your bowl blank is a smooth cylinder, move the tool rest so that you can smooth out the bottom of the bowl. It is likely that it is fairly smooth already, so you may not need to do much to ensure that it is flat.
Before you begin shaping the outside of the bowl, you will want to decide how you want to form the bottom of the bowl. If your bowl blank is attached to the lathe using a faceplate, you will likely not create a tenon or mortise and your blank will remain mounted to the lathe in one position the entire time you are turning it. If this is you, you can skip to the next step!
However, if your bowl blank is mounted to the lathe using a chuck, you will want to decide whether you will create a mortise or tenon on the bottom of the bowl in preparation for the hollowing of the inside of the bowl. A mortise is a small area cut into the bottom of the bowl, while a tenon is a piece of the blank that is cut to protrude beyond the bottom of the bowl.
The purpose of either is to allow a chuck to hold the bottom of the bowl while you hollow the inside. With a mortise, the chuck spurs will fit into the recess you’ve carved out and hold it in place using outward pressure. With a tenon, the spurs will hold the outside of the protruding piece using inward pressure.
Both work well, and a woodturner can use whichever suits their personal turning style. Keep in mind that a tenon will need to be removed after the bowl is finished, which adds another step to the process.
You are now ready to shape the outside of the bowl. This is where the woodturning gets fun! Bowls come in all shapes and sizes, so you can start with a basic shape and get more creative as you build your confidence in bowl turning.
When you were truing the blank, you placed your tool rest parallel to the surface of the cylindrical blank. Now, when shaping the outside of the bowl, you can now move your tool rest so that it is parallel to the shape you are creating. For instance, if your bowl will be curved at an angle of 30°, your tool rest should be placed at an angle of 30°.
Placing your bowl gouge at the right side of the tool rest, make short, light cuts to begin shaping the bottom of the bowl. Don’t take off too much at a time and use your right hand to steer your gouge in a curved shape to make the curved bottom. Move your tool all the way from the bottom up the sides of the bowl to make the entire outside of the bowl smooth.
If you mounted your bowl blank using a faceplate, you will need to do some extra work at this step before you begin shaping the bottom of the bowl. Because the faceplate is attached to the bowl blank with screws, you will not want to remove too much wood near where the screws are embedded in the wood. Doing so could cause the wood to crack, or you could unknowingly maneuver your bowl gouge straight into a screw as you shape the bottom of the bowl.
To avoid cracking wood or causing injury from a tool bouncing off a screw, you will want to mark the point where the screws end inside the wood. Using the measurement from the Mounting the Blank step, mark where the screws end. Continue this line around the entire cylindrical blank and treat that line as if it is the bottom of your bowl.
Once you are finished shaping the outside of the bowl and hollowing the inside, you will remove excess portion where the faceplate was attached.
Once the outside of your bowl is clearly defined, it’s time to start hollowing out the inside. You’re almost there! No matter how your bowl blank is attached to the lathe, the hollowing process is the same.
Start by moving your tool rest in front of the bowl so that your bowl gouge is pointed at what will become the interior of the bowl. Before you begin digging willy-nilly, decide how thick the rim will be and make some cuts to define the rim of the bowl.
Once the rim is ready, make larger scooping cuts to hollow out the inside of the bowl. Move your tool rest as needed so that your bowl gouge is angled to remove all excess wood from the inside of the bowl. When you are nearing the final wall thickness, make smaller cuts to ensure you don’t make the walls too thin. Always work from the top of the bowl downward; once you have reached the bottom of the bowl, don’t return to do more work on the rim, or you risk unbalancing the bowl.
Once you have smoothed the entire interior of the bowl, you may want to take some time to sand the inside and outside to ensure a silky-smooth finish. Your bowl is complete!
You can leave the bowl natural, or you can apply a finish. If your bowl is still mounted to the lathe with a faceplate, you can add finish and let it dry before you part it.
If you mounted your bowl to the lathe with a faceplate, your last step will be to remove it from the lathe. To do this, return to the mark you made that showed how long the screws are. If your mark has been erased during turning, you might want to re-draw it just to make sure you won’t hit the screws with your parting tool or saw.
Once you are sure of the screw length, use a parting tool to create a groove in the wood between the end of the screws and the bottom of the bowl. Don’t use the parting tool to cut the bowl all the way off. Instead, stop once your groove is about half an inch deep and use a saw to remove it the rest of the way.
After your bowl is free from the lathe, you just need to clean up the bottom. Turn the bowl around and fit it back over the piece of wood still secured to the faceplate, as long as the wood piece is big enough and no screws are showing. You might use a piece of foam or cloth over the wood as well. Use that piece of wood—called a jam chuck—to hold the bowl in place while you secure the bowl with the tailstock and shape the foot of the bowl with a bowl gouge.
The final bit of protruding wood on the bottom where the tailstock was connected can be sanded off, and voila! Your bowl is finished.
We talked about the safety equipment you need in another blog post, but it bears repeating. Make sure you are always wearing a face shield and eye protection, as well as a mask for dust. Always ensure that your tools are sharp. Wear close-toed shoes and keep your hair pulled back (if that is a concern for you.)
When making a bowl out of wood, here are the basic steps to follow:
And above all, have fun and enjoy the process!
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