Not to get too technical, but bowls are basically anything, um, well, shaped like a bowl. If it’s a really shallow bowl, some will call it a plate or a platter, but the process to make them is basically the same. This page is for “traditional” bowls, meaning the whole bowl is made from the same piece of wood.
I scavenged the wood for this bowl on a dark and moonless night from a neighbor who had a tree come down. After waiting about 6 months for the wood to dry, I turned it, thinking enough moisture had left the wood that it would be stable. This picture was taken the night it was finished. The next morning, it was nearly football shaped form warping and the cracks were so bad the bowl had almost ripped itself apart. It’s firewood now…
A different view of the same Ash bowl. Really like the way this one turned out!
This bowl is made from Ash. That wood’s pretty common in Central Illinois, because of some beetle that’s killing all the trees. Note to self, need to find some bug that will take down Birch trees…
I brought a piece of Elm home, forgot about it, then found it kicked over in a corner about two years later. For such a plain looking tree on the outside, I love the grain pattern of this bowl, especially when you look at it up close. Need to find me some more of that…
This is the cedar bowl I turned with Bob Adam, around 2009, that caused me to step away from carving and start turning.
This bowl is shallow, only about three inches tall.
top view of the first bowl.
Another bowl from Lisa’s white oak tree. Love the coloration in oak trees when they shoot those lines out that go opposite of the growth rings. It looks like cracks in the wood, but it’s not.
I came across the blank for this bowl in my shop, having forgotten ever roughing it out. Judging by the shape and where I found it in the shop, it must have been from at least 4 years ago. What emerged is an ash bowl, about 8 inches across. Pretty boring bowl, but put it next to the garage door and it would make an acceptable key holder.
Ok, so willow is either really pretty, or it’s a nightmare. Doesn’t seem to be any middle ground! This piece had all those little bark inclusions throughout it, which actually look pretty cool up close. Kinda like a bird’s eye maple, only really, really soft. Too much sanding with 80 grit and I think you could go right through the side.
I love the grain that cherry has. For this particular piece of wood, it had started to break down, which is where the dark coloration comes from on the end-grain part of the bowl.
In the April, 2016, blog, I talked about a bowl that I had started out of Mulberry and talked about how bad it cracked while it was drying. This is what the final project turned out to be. I filled all of the cracks with black CA glue, which not only keeps the bowl from continued cracking, but also looks pretty good. The white lines are from where the wood had cracked, but not deep enough to where the black CA glue could get into the crack. These are sealed with regular, clear, CA glue.
A year or so ago I turned a really crappy bowl out of an equally nasty piece of willow. It was so ugly and so poorly turned, I decided to use it to practice dying wood. Since the wood and the turning was bad, the dye job turned out absolutely horrendous! My daughter Courtney asked if she could wood burn on it, and I said yes, hoping she would just burn the evidence. What she was able to make out of my mistake actually turned out looking pretty cool!
This is another piece of cherry from a co-worker’s tree. It ended up being taller than I had expected, because the crack that you can see in this picture sealed up nicely and didn’t have to be removed.
Not sure what kind of wood this is, perhaps birch. The spalting (the black lines that run through the bowl) looks pretty good on this one!
