Drag a block of walnut out of the shed - this tree was knocked down in an ice storm and I have been drying it for a few years now. Normally I rough turn bowls from green wood within a few days of procuring it - in this case I stacked it in block form and so far it has been drying without any problems:
This is the block I selected:
I used giant calipers to scribe a circle on the largest face. Then I sawed out the round on my bandsaw:
The bandsaw was running when I took that picture - if you listen closely you can hear it. Next I drilled a 3/8" diameter hole using the center point of the scribed circle as a guide. Then I held the block up to the running lathe and the drive screw embedded itself into the blank:
You can see the growth rings and the curve of the log. Mounting it that way saves work - if you follow the natural shape of the tree you don't have to turn away quite so much wood.
Next, I brought up the tailstock and drove the dead center into what would become the foot of the bowl. This supports the block on the lathe during the worst of the unbalanced work:
The tool rest is now in position and I began rough turning the outside of the bowl.
My goal is to make the turned portions match the natural curve of the log.
At this stage I have turned away most of the waste on the outside of the bowl and have started to form the foot, which will also serve as a tenon which will be gripped by the 4-jaw chuck.
This picture show the further refinement of the foot and the amount of tear out that a bowl turning gouge causes on the long grain of a bowl. Next, I backed out the dead center on the tail stock and touched up the foot a bit:
Now we get to the part where we learn why it is called reverse turning - the bowl is taken off the drive screw and rotated 180 degrees when viewed from above:
Since my lathe is homemade and does not have a spindle lock I just put the chuck key in the 4-jaw chuck and use the tool rest as a stop - then I grab the bowl and twist it off the drive screw, which you can just barely see in this picture. Then I turn the bowl around and grab the foot with the jaws. Next, I moved the tool rest to match up with the curve of the bowl and turn it some more - there is always some run-out when you reverse a bowl like that so I true it up so that the outside and the inside match up:
After that step is done I move the tool rest around to what will become the top of the bowl. Here I am, ready to start hollowing out that sumbitch:
Bust out the bowl gouge and hit it:
It is slow going - I take maybe 1/32" of an inch off on each pass - I probably should have measured the thickness of one of those chips. Next, more of the same:
And more:
Notice a knot has showed up - unexpectedly - right there. Hmm. Next, more of the same:
Well, the knot was a limited thing, but that's what you find as you work with wood - surprises lurking in the middle of an otherwise clear blank. The picture above shows the pile of chips I made while turning the inside and outside of this bowl.
Now begins the true pain and agony - sanding.
I start with a Makita right angle grinder, 4" diameter discs, 50 grit for roughing out the shape. At this point I am paying close attention to the profile of the bowl - that's what makes or breaks it as a finished piece.
After sanding some with 80 grit sand paper I pour water all over it, inside and out to raise the grain.
I use a Milwaukee right angle close quarters drill, a bit extender and a foam sanding pad with Velcro to hold the sandpaper. The bowl spins, the sanding disc spins and eventually, in this case, something over 8 hours later, the sanding is completed. The picture above shows the bowl at 120 grit - some natural sheen is starting to show up.
This is where I was this morning - some sheen, but many scratches. The natural color of the walnut is starting to show up. More sanding:
That's the sapwood - nicely figured if you ask me. Still raw wood, scratches are greatly diminished.
Eventually I grow fatigued and accept that sometimes good enough is good enough.
Inside of the bowl with a coat of Original tung oil finish:
Now it is time to finish the foot, which is still being gripped by the chuck. For that step I use the Jumbo Jaws (tm) which grip the rim of the bowl after I reverse it a second time. This bowl was right at the limit of the diameter those jaws will hold:
The picture above shows the foot after I ground and sanded it, but before I branded it - can't have too much information leaking out randomly on the internet.
Here is its official portrait prior to being boxed up and shipped:
It has the great color variations that you get when you air dry walnut and it has some great figure, too. It wore me out but I like the results. The finished bowl is 15-1/2" in diameter and 6" deep.
30 comments:
Thanks Sixty Grit. I enjoyed seeing your process. When I have more time I'll look at those photos again. Take some consolation in your sanding knowing that I'll be sanding sheetrock today. But it's a small job and I'll be wet sanding rather than creating dust.
Most excellent. More pictures are more better.
Wow, just beautiful. What happens if you carve a block out with the holding screw at the center of the concentric growth rings?
If one turns a bowl from a slice (or cookie) through the log then as the bowl dries it cracks due to the difference in tangential versus radial shrinkage. I have turned a few of them over the years, a couple of them have made it, but by and large it is an enormous amount of effort for minimal return. Turning end grain is the worst - because you are cutting off the "straws" of the wood you can never get a clean cut and you end up with a ragged bottom on the inside of the bowl. Can't have that.
The drums I have turned have all been done that way - basically spin a log along its longitudinal axis and once the outside is shape, hollow out the inside. Brutal work, so I am over it at this time.
Maybe I should post some of the end grain bowls I have turned - one in particular is actually quite nice.
That would be great. I'm guessing the non-end grain turn is more aesthetically pleasing, anyway. Seeing rings on the side of bowl is cool. Infinite outcomes. Your bowls are like clouds, all different.
I had been hoping you would do that, Sixty. Nice to see what the process actually entails... a he!! of a lot work it seems. After all the drying does the wood still have a good smell as you work it, and man that's a pile of chips. Beautiful result though.
I love watching great craftsman, and Sixty, you are that.
All of the above!
Along the lines of Chip Ahoy's detailed vid of beef carving, this reveal of process was enough to turn something too, transforming the jonesing for a salad urge into a cloud of interest, admiration and poetry. Well done!
Every tree has a story to tell. For a raconteur such as yourself SixtyG, to be also be engaged in collecting and sharing the stories of trees in bowls, seems a fine fit. With the skill, tenacity, vision and effort needed to do so also appreciated.
The author mentioned in an earlier canoe post, Holling G Holling, who wrote Paddle to the Sea, also wrote and illustrated A Tree on the Trail, another story of a tree with a wonderful ending.
The book tells the story of a lone cottonwood tree encountered as a sapling by a Kansa Indian boy in 1610, on what became the Santa Fe Trail, and the events that passed by the tree: buffalo migrations, warring tribes, the coming of the Spaniards, French trappers, and trade caravans on the Trail. Eventually the tree dies and is made into an ox-yoke and travels down the Trail itself.
Nice. And you made your own wood lathe - out of wood.
So the forms, the internal and external radii, are just eyeballed, no template? I wondered how you did that.
Flitch is new to me, with sides of an animal entering into that description too involving something like a side root going back to flesh.
Rabel, I was given the large threaded rod that I use to hold the dead center. It was from a used OneWay brand lathe, a very high quality lathe made in Canada. I called up the boys way up north and asked what the specs on the thread are so that I could buy a nut that I could anchor in the tail stock so that I could make the dead center extend and retract. Good thing I did, too, as it turns out it is a 3/4" left hand acme thread - I might have tried a lot of things before I found the right nut for that job. But the point of this story is that I called up OneWay and spoke to the owner and his comment was "Oh, it looks like you misunderstood the words 'wood lathe', eh?" Cracked me up. He's a funny guy and he hit on the truth right off the bat.
But yeah, the diameter of the bowl was determined by the size of the block I started with, which was the diameter of the tree from which that section was cut. The curvature of the outside of the bowl was similarly determined by the shape of the log. For the curve of the inside of the bowl I just eyeball the wall thickness as I turn and then try to fair it out into a nice shape. The key points of that process are not getting the walls too thin or going too deep and turning right through the bottom of the bowl - sometimes I will use calipers to give me some feedback on wall or bottom thickness, but on this one I just winged it and it worked out fine.
I have turned over a thousand bowls and at some point I would like to think that I know what I am doing, but of course that sort of hubris inevitably results in problems. Can I mix Greek and Hindu philosophies? Hubris and karma - what the hey - I just did.
MamaM - I like that story of the cottonwood being used to make a yoke. That sort of thing never even occurred to me. Good one.
Thanks to one and all for the kind comments - I was hoping this story would not be too mundane or inside baseball, I am glad it is appreciated.
They used to tell us that a lathe was the only machine tool that could reproduce itself. I never figure out just how it would do that.
A metal cutting lathe is a very different tool than my wood lathe - using a machine lathe you can cut screws, threads, nuts, bolts, pulleys, gears and so on. You can turn axles and mandrels and cams and all sorts of useful ways to transmit power. Also, as you cut threads you can use them cut even more accurate threads and then scale those up and down to different sizes. And left hand threads. They can do it all. Of course in order to totally duplicate a lathe you would need some way to cut steel accurately, like a milling machine. So were I interested in making machine tools I would start with a lathe and a milling machine and spend time making sharp little metal chips. Machine shops are fascinating places, in fact when I had to repair the drive axle/four-jaw chuck interface on my lathe I hauled the pieces parts over to the local machine shop and they set it all right for me. What a great place that was, and it had NASCAR history dating back to the days of the Flock family of racers here locally.
I can make bowls and do some spindle turning on my lathe. I'm good.
Operated a vertical turret lathe for Pratt&Whitney one summer in 1968. I was rumbling about leaving college and my old man wanted to see factory work. He worked there for 40 years. They were different metal parts. I did the first cuts..a retard could do them. There was one part made out of nickel. The foreman always stood over my shoulder when I was cutting that.
XRay - I was just out working in the shop between thunderstorms and I swept up a bit - and yes, walnut still smells like walnut even after it has been cut down, cut up, dried, sawed, turned and sanded. The dust is still quite aromatic.
Spins, I worked in foundries and machine shops in South Boston when I lived up there - as the new guy I was given tasks like grinding the flash off of castings - not exactly skilled labor, but it has to be done. That same shop also heat treated what I was told were drive shafts for prop driven aircraft - we would pack the precision turned shafts, each close to 6 feet long, into tubes, pack bone meal around each piece so that they wouldn't touch each other or the sides of the tubes, seal the ends of the tubes. We would then stack the loaded tubes onto a railroad car covered with refractive material (asbestos? Who knows) then, using a winch, we would drag the railroad car into an enormous kiln and light the gas jets around the sides. Sumbitch would heat up until the pieces reached the proper temperature (that was before I studied the concepts of the solution of carbon and other alloying metals in steel and the eutectic properties of iron-carbon equilibrium phase diagram and the conditions necessary to form different phases so I couldn't even ask intelligent questions about what was going on. But being a bunch of Irish from Southie they probably would have just beat me down for being a smart ass in any case.
Sixty, You are on my short list to visit and listen to you tell me about your life. My bride just finished book #4. I'm ~1/2 through it. About sex trafficking of 2 minor girls by their father. She's getting better every time.
New England used to be the mecca for skilled tool and die men and machinists. My buddies who certainly could have gone to college made damn good livings as tool and die makers and precision machinists.
Come on down, Bubba, you know I never leave home! Plus, that will give you an excuse to visit proper beaches with proper warm water. None of that frigid Pacific H2O, no, the water temp down at the coast is probably 85 degrees these days. Just right.
We're having a family/friend reunion on the Vineyard. I know folks here will scoff. But, it's a beautiful and relaxing place in the off season. We had annual reunions in the 90's. Haven't been back since then. We'll be there in mid September. That's some of the warmest water, but still only mid to high 60's. I've been to the Vineyard a dozen or so times. Never during the Summer season. As I get older I yearn for those Gulf Stream waters. I'm hoping in the next couple years to get down to see you.
Hopefully this comment doesn't draw the clumber man.
Good one! I know a woman who grew up on tha vineyud. She is down-to-earth and she taught me how to properly pronounce words so that I would fit in better up there, should I ever return to Yankeeland. Of course, that'll never happen, but it's nice to be prepared.
ND Will you be driving to your reunion on the vineyud?
Michigan's West Coast where the MrM and I reside is much closer than Sixty's Neck o'the Woods and a lovely ferry ride over from the other side of Lake Mich without having to go anywhere near the traffic of Chicago. Plus the route East through Canada (Sarnia MI over the Blue Water Bridge up to Hamilton on the Queen's Highway, crossing over again at Niagara/Buffalo--with a stop at Stratford OT for a play or dinner as an option on the way) is another route to consider if car is how you'll be going. I don't have stories to match MrGrits that's for sure, but I'm fairly sure from reading your wife's stories that I'd get along with her if you're taking a road trip and would like to tweak your itinerary. You'd be welcome to stop by.
Mama, No, we got a 2 year old so we're flying into Boston, renting a car, driving to the ferry, and boating over. This was an annual sojourn for a decade when our kids and my siblings kids were all young. My son has a sister and 8 cousins..all girls. He toughened a few up. And one was just as tough as him.
As you know, I like to take roads less traveled. I have long wanted to take that route you describe and now I have another motivation, meeting the Mensch of Michigan. I don't know if you know, I attended Aridog's funeral in MoTown. I was on a tight schedule, I was on call for a trial. I drove there thru Chicago. But, on the way back treated myself, and my vehicle, to the ferry across Lake Michigan.
Safe Travels, ND. In my experience the trip down from Boston to the Cape was a journey all by itself, definitely not one of the roads less traveled, with more lines of cars than marked lanes going in, unless they've upgraded the road in recent years. The ferry sounds like the way to go there too!
The M of Michigan will be here if you ever decide to do a drive by. With your encouragement, two (out of three) quart bags of hotel amenities were donated to our local outreach/mission store, with one held back "just in case". Recovery is one bag at a time!
LOL. Indeed it is. Our door also open in Minnesota..or San Diego when we're there. We are currently living in 3 month increments between radiology results.
Nick, I sure hope those are going well - I do keep your family in my thoughts.
Thanks, Sixty. So far all test have shown no more cancer.
So glad to hear, Nick.
Wonderful post. I love the pictures. It really helps me to appreciate what you do and the level of devotion you have for your craft.
WMVY is a radio station on Martha's Vineyard. I've listened to it online (via i-Tunes) for years. It'd be cool to tune in on the car radio.
Thanks, Deborah.
Windbag, I have listened to that station as it was always playing in a bar I would frequent. I'll tune it in on our rental car, vicariously for you.
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