How to Turn a Basic Bowl-Part I

this is a small cherry blank around six inch and that's going to be a simple bowl I'm going to turn it on the screw Chuck so we need that this is a Vic mark three and one screw jack and now I need a hole in the center of the blank so this blank was cut obviously with the plywood disc so there's no center hole if it have been drawn with dividers like these then we know where the centre was so I'm just going to eyeball this and see how we go the more you eyeball stuff the better you get at it oh not too bad so I'll go there but if you don't have that and you want to find Center then you can set the dividers to about right and just draw a series of arcs holding the the point out on the edge of the blank and you'll see I was absolutely dead right I'm very impressed with myself there so need to drill a hole in the middle the drill is the same diameter as the shank on the screw Chuck and I drill the holes more or less upright doesn't matter if it's a couple of degrees off now I don't need all that screw and so I use some little plywood disks just to reduce the effective length and that should be alright that's probably something you wouldn't do at home you can do it a slightly slower speed with a round blank you shouldn't do yourself too much of an injury initial cuts just sweep the edge through the corner remove the corner by sweeping the edge through an hour into the wood and across the bottom take a little shear cut with the bevel riding back towards Center that's for the base all I need at this stage is a foot on the rough that shape and having roughed out the outside now I need to put the screw jack on so that I can grip the ball by the foot and hollow it and here we have the step jaws and the next thing is to drill a depth hole I don't normally measure the depth because I've made thousands of these bowls but if you want to make sure you don't go through the bottom use a depth drill you'll notice these have little notches which I've ground on the high speed grinder helped me know how deep I'm going rest is just a little too high or drop that out of the way this is a half inch bowl gouge which we'll use to hollow it out basically lining the bevel up of the direction I want to go which is towards the center and keep the tool on its side for the garden facing away from you so that's all we need to do at this stage this is a roughed out bowl and normally these would go into a box probably a big cardboard box full of them for maybe six months eight months the old rule of thumb is a year per inch of board thickness for drying plus a year now you're not going to want to hang around for two years to do that you've taken a lot of the inside out so it's already going to be moving just because you've adjusted the stresses in the wood normally you just leave that maybe for six months and then have a go we're going to try and speed things up stick it in the microwave for a couple of minutes so it'll come out hot too hot to handle and it might move it might not it's cherry it's a stable wood anyway so off we go so here we are with it remounted and as you can see it's out of whack before I can't wrap the outside I've got to get a stable surface on the inside which is a little square shoulder which I do with the three quarter inch square and scraper it's just going to go straight in create a little shoulder so I can flip the bowl around and expand the jaws here in onto that shoulder just make one more just to be sure a little bit wider and to this stage it also pays to trim up the rim much more difficult later and as you can see as I spin it round and see the eccentricity and so the straws are just going to go right into that shoulder now with the outside fully exposed I can do all the outside shaping and basically finish the outside so first I drop the foot and then just use the lower wing of a tool to skim the rim of the base then I can flip the tool over have the bevel riding and take a sheer cut back to Center now I need to do the side using to the left of the point of the tool and just drag the gouge up the surface just to true it up at this stage so if you need to move the rest if you find you're running out of rest let's move it around and always come in from the top face if you work off the face then you're likely to tear away the end grain just a little bit more to come off here so the idea at this stage is to get away all the flat areas everything you don't want in the final piece and then work out what you can do with what's left so before I do any of the final shaping I need to decide on the size of the foot and I'm going to use these sharp tools I need to get this back to the original machine size which means that I can make a foot that size and the jaws won't mark the wood which is major advantage of these Chuck's so that's about right it was machined round then cut then I can feel the spur here on one side of the jaw and just bring it in with the other side so I only need to watch one point and then that diameter gets transferred to the base and need to bring the rest round just about Center height the idea now is to make a mark of the left point which lines up with the right point and if you get the center between the two points should be fairly easy because you can gauge where the left point needs to make the mark in relation to the to the outside of the foot and also at the center I'm going to get it wrong first and so I need to move the left point over half the distance between the right point and the line the left point is making which is there and that is the diameter I need for the foot so the next thing is to set that diameter and I normally use the three spindle guards for that this is a fingernail grind it's got a fairly long bevel handplant is on the rest and they'll squeeze the tool in once I finished roughing the foot then I can drag the gouge back a little bit but basically I need a heavier tool to do the shaping of the profile and on this occasion I'll do that with the half inch Bowl gouge having used the pull cut to come around the curve then I'm going to take a share cut with the tool pointing the direction I'm going from the just above the foot so this is just going to be a simple bowl and I keep an eye on the upper horizon up here so I can see what I'm going to be doing if you find you're going out into space you have the wrong trajectory on the cut just fly it into space then come back and pick the cut up on the smooth part of the wood a little bit lower down and just going slightly deeper that way you'll maintain a smooth curve so that's yep that's a pretty good surface straight off the tool a little bit of burnished mark here but there's nothing here which would stop you starting to sound really with probably 180 grit maybe 120 might be used but that would be fine most people be delighted to have a surface like that off the gouge but in fact I can probably improve it using the sheer scraper so one its sheer scraper and so we'll have a look at what that does welljust yeah that's going alright so that looks pretty good now we can go ahead with the top half just make sure as you're cutting that the point of the cut is in the lower half of the edge otherwise you're likely to have a catch so that's a great improvement almost a pity to scratch it with the breezes now I need to do the base they use the skewed sheer scraper flat on the rest and just ease it back and take the corner into the wood so I get a little bit of decoration then I can use the long point of the clean up the left side of that bring it back again and just have another little brush across the center the clean up the corner in the detail a little bit rougher than the side but okay having done that I go to the three-eighths spindle gouge to complete the rim for a precise cut here I need to pin the tool to the rest raise the handle to pivot the edge into the wood once the bevels riding you can roll it very slightly clockwise but make sure at the end of the cut its back on its side then you come around get the bevel riding on the bottom of the profile and just ease it into the top of the foot you can rotate it very slightly counterclockwise to get a bit of Shaving drop the handle and then roll the tool over use the left wing which is the lower piece to stroke the outer lip of the base and that'll give you a nice little rounded foot well I'm thinking this looks a bit plain so I think I'll stick it a bead up here so I need to move the restaurant and for this cut still using the 3/8 spindle guards I'm going to pin it to the rest and essentially just take the end of the handle round and little circle anti-clockwise and that will dip the edge in and out of the wood now that might look difficult but the problem is that once you get the hang of it which it doesn't take too long you tend to cover everything with beads

Channel: FineWoodworking

Views: 1,458,588

Keywords: 2831666108001, tiv631_01, bowl, free, YT1, woodturning, Richard Raffan, youtube, tiv631, Lathe, turning, Fine Woodworking

Id: TIvROyV2n6w

Length: 12min 10sec (730 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 11 2014

Reddit Comments

[u/BenStrano]

Hey guys, that link to part two is pirated and will obviously be taken down soon. We'll take the blame for not posting part two on youtube though considering it is free on our website. I've got the video uploading to Youtube right now and you'll be able to find it here. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nPPvtP2bbkg

Thanks, Ben@Fine Woodworking

[u/tebriel]

part 2 is like... you bastard.

[u/ArtDSellers]

I need a lathe.

[u/Silound]

Richard Raffan is arguably one of the godfathers of non-spindle turning (bowls, boxes, etc). His instructions and techniques are copied far and wide by turners of all skill levels.

If you really want to watch something hairy, watch this video of Raffan using a spindle gouge to hollow small lidded boxes. He's using a technique he calls "back hollowing" where he uses both wings of the gouge in a constant motion to hollow the box.

I've tried, tried, tried and tried to learn and emulate that technique, but talk about a white-knuckle experience!

[u/lessnonymous]

Part 2 in which he finishes turning and waxes the bowl. You won't believe what he does next.

Edit: updated link to non-pirated version.

[u/[deleted]]

dammm that wood is just melting off when he starts around 1:50....

[u/Roninspoon]

"that's something you obviously won't try at home."

[u/_THE_DICKENS]

Is anyone else really pissed he is wearing long sleeves? Like wtf man! I don't care how many bowls you've turned, safety is important. All it takes is one slip.

[u/tigermaple]

Doesn't get much better than Richard Raffan! He has indeed turned literally tens of thousands of bowls and boxes during his lifetime.

A couple more bowl turners that are his peers in skill and amount of work produced:

Glenn Lucas - overview of his green wood bowl turning process. More inspirational than instructional, but beautiful shots in 1080p

Mike Mahoney makes a natural edge bowl

If these videos have gotten you fired up, come check out r/turning! We've got more where these came from plus safety and lathe buying info in the wiki.