Lidded Bowl

A couple of friends in my woodturning club have been encouraging me to put some of my pen designs in some larger turnings. This is my first attempt. The original concept called for a six sided bowl where the six legs lined up with the design of the lid. However, a design opportunity occurred while turning. Basically I turned the legs to thin and they disappeared.

The woods used are all from Zambezi Exotics. The bowl is made from hard pear, the lid is white milkwood and the finial is black alder.

If you’d like to see how I made this lidded bowl please read on:

Bowl blanks and veneer

The centers of each blank were marked on each side.

Laying out the design

I laid out the design of the bowl using a compass. I drew the outer circle then, without changing the diameter of the compass, I established 6 points on the outer circle, 60 degrees apart. I then reduced the diameter of the compass by about half an inch and using the six points as a center, drew 6 intersecting semi-circles.

Checking bandsaw table

First thing to do on the bandsaw was to change the blade to a 1/8″ blade, and check the bandsaw table was square to the blade.

Sanding the cut

After the first cut, I sanded the cuts by folding a piece of sandpaper in half and then rubbing the two sections together.

First two cuts

First glue up

I ripped the veneer to width using my veneer cutting jig, and then got ready for the glue up. An important point here is that the thickness of the veneer needs to match the kerf of the saw. Bascially what you remove from the blank with the saw kerf needs to be replaced by the veneer. If you insert a veneer that is different in thickness to the saw kerf, then the design will not line up after the first couple of cuts. I had measured the kerf of my bandsaw blade by making some test cuts in scrap wood, and measuring the width of the kerf with a pair of feeler gauges. I determined that it was 0.040″ thick. A sheet of veneer is about 0.020″, give or take a thousand of an inch. So I needed to insert a double layer of veneer in each cut.

I did not take any pictures of the glue up. After the first glue up, I realized I was being a bit to ambitious by trying to glue two cuts at once. The subsequent cuts, three through six, I did one at a time and the glue up was a lot less stressful.

All cuts and glue ups complete

The lid blank after all the cuts and glue ups are complete. Round about now I’m thinking, that looks like a mess, I hope something nice comes of that.

Laying out the bowl

The six sided bowl was laid out with a compass and a hexagon drawn on it.

Lining up the first cut

I then cut it to shape using my sliding compound miter saw.

Bowl and lid ready for turning

Here are the bowl and lid ready for turning.

Rough turning the outside of the lid

Rough turning the inside of the lid

Inside of lid sanded and sealed

Final turning of outside of lid

The lid was reversed and held using a vacuum chuck.

Lid complete and hole drilled for finial

I drilled the hole for the finial using a forstner bit. I was very cautious on the depth of the hole given that the lid was held on with the vacuum chuck.

Truing the bowl

Defining the fit of the lid

Inside of the bowl complete

This is where things started to go wrong. While trying to get a nice shape to the outside of the bowl I started to turn the legs off. Instead of the legs coming to a point, they started to thicken out. In retrospect I think I should have started with a bowl blank of greater diameter relative to it’s depth.