Wood Bowl Turning Without A Chuck Woodturning Video

you're going to want to see this i'm going to turn an entire bowl with only three tools [Music] hi i'm kent and welcome to turn a wood bowl you know i get asked often can i turn a bowl without a chuck do i have to buy a chuck in order to turn a bowl well a chuck makes things a little bit easier but guess what you don't have to buy a chuck as a matter of fact you only need a few tools to turn a wood bowl without a chuck and i'm going to turn this bowl today with just these three tools so let's go ahead and get started all right so i need to center up this bowl blank this is a piece of poplar that has spalted really nice the spalting visible on the sides is really really beautiful so i'm kind of really curious to see how this bowl turns out so i'm going to be using a spur chuck to mount this end to end on the lathe if you want to learn more about this spur chuck and other ways to mount bulb lengths to the lathe check out my video so i'm bringing up the tail stock basically this is just going to be held between centers with the tension of the tail stock now what's important is i need to tighten that tail stock up continuously and remember to continuously continuously tighten it as i'm turning because with the rotation of the lathe and the vibration of the tool and that the end-to-end turnings can loosen up so you want to continuously tighten up that tail stock now i'm using a half inch bowl gouge this is a half inch shaft with a 3 8 inch flute it's a relatively small bowl gouge for these roughing cuts here initially especially going through the bark this isn't the most ideal way to do this i would use a heavier bowl gouge typically but what i want to illustrate is that you can actually create a bowl with very minimal tools and i'm only using this single bowl gouge as the only cutting tool in this process right there you saw the the lathe vibrate a little bit because my speed is up just a little bit too high so i had to bring that speed down so i don't see or feel any vibration in the lathe and the reason is vibrating is the fact that this bull blank is not balanced we've got bark areas and different areas that need to be dealt with as the blank becomes more balanced while i'm turning i'm going to be able to bring that speed up i'll tell you the bark is the toughest part to work through it's incredible how difficult bart can be sometimes this particular bark is is held in place really well some bark will just flake right off and it's no big deal as i continue making this curve this blank is chewing up and it's becoming more balanced so i'm able to bring the speed up just a touch but not enough yet to really make a big difference so i'm just going to keep working this material away until we start getting a shape here now this is going to be the bottom of the bowl that you see in front of you here so we're going to be reversing this eventually look at that spalt starting to become visible here it's pretty pretty impressive now remember through this whole process continue to adjust your tool rest make sure that it's adjusted so that your tool cutting edge is on center and you want to keep that rest up as close as possible to your turning piece without getting too close check out that video about the tool rest that i have in my library here youtube and you can see what i'm doing and basically it's a choppy cut here because i keep getting bounced around with the positive and negative areas and the the bark as well so it's not smooth by any means yet but you basically just keep working through this layer by layer until we start getting a smooth continuous cut and that'll happen once all that bark and those negative spaces are removed this wood is a few years old and it's starting to get a little punky or it's dried out a bit so i gotta be really careful how i treat the the ingrained and i have a whole video on that on in green tear out so i'm going to have to be aware of that as i'm turning this entire piece because that's going to be an issue especially on the end grain as you notice here as i'm making this push cut from right to left i've angled the flute of the gouge here i'm actually making a face cut i'm going to flatten out this face so we can get this established and i'm going to make sure this is smooth and level all the way across and one of the ways to check that is to put the bowl gouge right up against this surface and the shaft of the bowl gouge is straight and true so you should be able to see that your your face is true as well now i'm using my dividers to determine the width of the face plate the faceplate is going to be mounted on this end and that's how we're going to reverse this blank on the lathe so i'm going to use the left side of the dividers only the right side is used as a kind of a guide i'm eyeballing and seeing if that line that i'm scribing is directly under the right side then i know i have the width established and what i'm going to do is i'm going to remove a little indentation here and this is going to help me center up the face plate once i take this blank off the lid these are very light cuts the flute is relatively open this is a backwards pull cut and we want to do this very lightly here if you notice as i move across this with the flute that open or pointing almost to 12 o'clock you want to be very careful to make really light cuts don't become aggressive with the flute in that position that's a good way to get a nasty catch so i'm going to smooth out some of those areas just a little bit more i need this to be relatively flat it doesn't have to be absolutely perfect but i want it to be relatively flat so again with the flute pretty open i'm making a super light cut right there all right it's time to sharpen again sharpening this bowl gouge is going to be critical throughout this turning and actually with spalted wood spalt is actually mineral deposits from fungus and those mineral deposits are harder than the steel and they'll actually wear down that cutting edge as well so i'm going to be sharpening frequently throughout this turning if you want to learn more about shaping and sharpening all of your tools for wood bowl turning check out my online tool sharpening e-course there's a link below in the description all right so i'm just going to continue knocking down the side materials and trying to get this blank balanced a little bit more you can see on the on the edges there you can see how there's a high spot in low spot and that's what's contributing to the the piece not being balanced as soon as that's leveled off however we're gonna start having a a more true turning and we'll be able to uh turn up the lathe speed a bit the purpose for marking where that faceplate is going to be is to give me an idea of how much space i need to leave at the bottom of this blank this is a relatively large blank so i'm basically going to remove a bunch of material here at the base of this bowl and there's gonna be some waste material right where that face plate is based on the the screws that will be in the faceplate we'll see that in just a minute these are aggressive cuts i am on the left wing of the bowl gouge here and i'm making very aggressive cuts just to remove material it is clearly tearing out the end grain pretty dramatically but that's not a big issue at this point my my main concern is to remove material i'm not trying to make a a super smooth finish at this point so here you can see i'm taking probably uh 3 8 of an inch wide pass as i'm cutting this and now i'm going to change my body position and make a pull cut this is also going to be using utilizing that lower wing and you can see here is is getting close to 3 8 of an inch or almost a half an inch about a centimeter centimeter and a half width that i'm pulling off there and again this is just to remove material i'm not trying to make a smooth cut here but as i move from right to left i've got the bull gouge flute in about the 10 30 position if the flute straight up is 12 o'clock it's rotated to the left at about a 10 30 position all right i really need to take those high spots down on the side so that we can get the lathe speed up so i'm just going to make a a side cut here right across the edge and smooth up that edge that's going to give me the ability to get that the lathe speed up now the tool rest has to be positioned just right for this so you need to know more about the tool rest check out the video i've got on all the information you need to know about using your tool rest on the lathe i have a lot of down pressure on the tool rest here with my left hand and i'm not moving my hands or arms i'm actually shifting my body weight only and gliding the bowl gouge across the tool rest you do not want to be trying to manipulate the bowl gouge with your hands or your arms you instead wanted to shift your body weight just relax your knees and move your the core of your body forward and that's going to slide the bowl gouge across and make a nice straight path across the tool rest okay so now that the bowl blank is starting to become a little more true we can speed this up quite a bit and it's going to give us the opportunity to make a smoother cut as well now this nub in the center here is a concern of mine i'm going to take this off and the reason is i want to be able to have a clear mark from the tail stock where the base of this is once we get down the road so i'm looking forward here a little bit so i want to remove this material i have to be careful this this material is fragile you can see the dryness in the end grain right there so i'm not going to do any more turning here i don't want to lose this and have it come flying off the lathe instead i'm going to take it off for just a minute and then i'm going to use a chisel and a mallet and knock that that little nub off of there it's not going to take much this dry this wood is dry and and it comes off very easily and i'm just kind of eyeballing the faceplate at this point we're not quite ready to put the faceplate on there but i just want to see what it's looking like okay so i'm going to put this back on the lathe i just needed to get that excess material and the nub out of the out of the way so that i can get a good clear connection here now i'm going to set this up i can see that it's not balanced at the moment one of the ways to balance this very easily is to move the tool rest put your thumb next to it and then feel the high spot and when the high spot touches your thumb move that to the top loosen the tail stock and drop the bull blank down just a touch now look at that it's not perfectly true but it's a lot it's turning a lot truer than it was originally all right so now i'm going to continue turning i've got a good clean connection point there and a mark that the tool rests i'm sorry that the tail stock is making into the base of the bolt blank now i know where my faceplate is going to be i know how much area i need down there and i can get the the lathe speed up and i'm going to become much more aggressive removing this material at the base of the bowl again i know i've got a waste material there right at the very bottom because i'm going to have the screws in it from the faceplate that's going to be attached so i want to clear that area out and just kind of disregard it because we won't be too concerned with that area that's not going to be part of the bowl again very wide aggressive cuts here but all the pressure is down on the tool rest and just gliding the tool across the surface of the wood and let the wood be cut by the the edge of the tool you don't want to force the bowl gouge into the wood you just want to glide it across it and remove that material these are all supported grain cuts and what that means is the fibers underneath the fibers that are being cut are longer therefore they're supporting the cut however because this wood is so dry and the end grain is somewhat punky being this aggressive is still going to give me tear outs on that end grain so when i get to the point where i'm ready to make a nice smooth finish on this i need to make much lighter cuts for right now this is again just a roughing cut this is also where i'm trying to determine the shape of this bowl and what i'll be doing with it because i have enough material to work here it i think i'm going to do something that's a kind of like a deeper v-shaped bowl almost like a cone and here you can see how much material i have now that first inch or so at the base of this is going to be wasted because of the screws that will be in it but i have quite a bit of material to work with here now i do have some cracks up along the top of this that are going to need to be removed so i don't have the full width that you see here from left to right i'm going to have to remove some of that top edge because there's some cracks in the pith area that's still there look at that spalt that's incredible you can see the tear out that's occurring on the end grain there so again i'm trying to get the shape established so i'm going to do some more aggressive cuts this is a kind of a pull scraping cut and each chance that i get too i'm also continually tightening up that tail stock as well because as you turn the spikes from the spur chuck are gonna keep working their way into the bulb length and if they work their way in there and become loose then there's a chance that the blank can come dislodged so you want to continuously tighten up that tail stock i'm want to establish the base of where this bowl will be and that's where that angle that i'm creating at the bottom of the blank i'm just using a push cut again we're going from right to left and i have the flute angled at about the 10 o'clock position so i'm actually cutting on the bottom left wing now this is also a supported cut that we just talked about a minute ago that means that the length of the grain fibers underneath when i'm turning have a longer crane if you want to learn more about that check out my video about which direction to turn the supported wood grain cuts it's actually a really important aspect of wood bowl turning that you need to understand and it requires a little more information than what i can provide you here but go check that out in my channel video list i'm starting to take some lighter cuts here because i'm getting close to a shape that i'm liking as far as the exterior or the potential exterior for this bowl the lighter that you make these cuts the less in-grain tear-out there will be and that's going to be important especially with this dryer wood okay now we're going to mount this blank to the face plate i want to center this up using the indented area and we need to look at these screws before we get in there they're up almost an inch long or about 2.5 centimeters i need to remember that that measurement now if you want to learn more about what you should do and shouldn't do with a face plate check out my video all about face plate now i'm looking straight down in that mark that the tail stock made and lining that up with the center and then i'm going to start the first screw but i'm not going to set it all the way in i'm going to start one on the opposite side and then set that one and what i'm trying to do is i'm trying to make sure that i keep the faceplate centered the whole time if i tighten that first one it's going to torque and twist the the faceplate a bit and it's going to become off center so those three are holding in its center and i'm just going to go ahead and put in the remaining screws by the way this is a impact driver to drive these in with a square driver bit and it works amazingly well i have all these tools links in the description below you can check those out now when you put something on we put a faceplate on the lathe hold the blank and turn the hand wheel of the headstock that way you reduce the chance of stripping those threads now even though the faceplate is holding this securely you want to bring the tail stock up for added support especially with the size of this right now and i'm marking the area that needs to be removed at the top there's cracks in there so all of that area is going to be removed now down here where the screws are i'm going to mark that one inch area and that way i'll remember not to be turning into that area that's and not to be including that in the bowl design this is all going to be wasted area at this point so that's a good idea just to keep that mark so you're you remember why that's marked and keep that in mind here you can see the crack that's going across the top of that i'm going to remove all of that material here i'm just going to do some really simple push cuts now i'm going from left to right and the bull gouge flute is approximately at the 1 o'clock or 1 30 angle as i'm making this push cut from left to right i'm only putting pressure i'm only putting down pressure with my left hand on the tool rest my left hand is being used to keep the tool rest on i'm sorry the bowl gouge on the tool rest and keep that pass a nice smooth continuous flow from left to right and again there's no arm or body movement or arm or hand movement here it's all of the movement is created by shifting my body weight i've relaxed my knees and i'm shifting my body weight from where i'm starting initially until i glide forward what you want is you want your you want to stand so that you're about in the center of the pass right about there and you're standing straight up so you kind of tilt yourself back just a little bit to start and then you're tilting just a little bit forward you don't want to be over leaning or stretching here you can see that angle of the flute a little bit better also take a look here you see those lines in the bowl that look like a record player they're like grooves in there that's an indication that my cutting pass is too fast but i'm just roughing material out here so i don't really care about that if i were trying to make a nice smooth finish cut here i would need to slow the pace of my bowl gouge down quite a bit in order for the lathe to give the lathe enough time to bring the bowl blank around to make a nice smooth cut instead i'm kind of cutting a little bit faster than the bowl is being rotated so two ways of fixing that either slow my pace down or speed the lathe up one of the two and that's going to give me a smoother finish versus those the lines that you're seeing in there the grooves that are being created but again it's not that big of an issue right here because this is a roughing cut now i want to get this nub out of the way and remember the tool rest i'm sorry the tail stock is not necessary at this point i'm basically just just pulling it out of the way and i'm going to whittle this nub down so i've got a nice smooth surface all the way across the bowl and remember the the bull is rotating at the slowest speed in the center so if you don't want to rip out fibers you want to take a slow slow cut right up to that center point all right so now we can start to see the shape of the bowl and what i need to do it's not quite perfectly true here you can see there's a little bit of wobble in that bowl i need to true up the exterior of the bowl before i can continue here so in order to do that i'm going to start making push cuts from the base of the bowl up to the rim and that's going to be a supported green cut again check out that video on which direction to cut supported green cuts it's really important to understand if you don't already understand that i was slightly off bevel there so i was getting on some tool marks because i was up on the tip of the tool and at this point i really want to start making lighter cuts so that i'm cleaning up that surface here you can see the push cut a little bit better now the lighter cuts are going to help to clean up the edge or the tear out that's occurred on that end grain and if you want to know more about how to take care of tear outs check out my video that talks and deals with this in much more detail by doing this work on the exterior now the the bowl is going to be turning completely true now on the face plate remember we were originally mounted from on the spur chuck into in and when i switch between the spur chuck to the face plate the the center is not going to be perfectly true and it's going to be almost impossible to make it perfectly true but we're doing what we just did there we'll correct all of that and clean up the exterior of the bowl and make it turn true and balanced so now i'm going to establish the rim of the bowl and i'm going to start removing material that's going to be taken away from the inside of the bowl and i'm just going to leave the tail stock there for now so that i've got good support as i'm making this these cuts i like to move down the side of the bowl and remove the center material slowly and gradually as i go this gives me much more stability versus clearing out the center of the bowl and working outward so what i do is i basically make a like a small ditch on the side and remove material from the center of the bowl and keep bringing that whole center area down this is a right to left push cut and again that bull gouge flute is angled at about the 10 or 10 30 position and i'm cutting on the left front tip of the bowl gouge and these are relatively aggressive cuts again this is designed for roughing or removing material this is not designed as a finishing cut at this point and i'll just keep removing this material until i get down to to basically reduce that whole center area at this point i can back the tail stock away you can see how dry and brittle that material is in the middle there this is going to just break off all right and i can smooth out that area and then start making another ditch down the side is going to give me room to start making that the side cuts here so now i'm going to establish the wall thickness i want to bring the bowl gouge in close to the 9 o'clock or a 90 degree angle like at the 3 o'clock position to start so i don't get a kickback kickbacks occur when you present the bull gouge at an angle to the edge of the bull i have a video on that how to stop kickbacks if you want to check that out so what i'm doing here is i'm just just working the first couple inches of the inside of the bull wall to establish the wall thickness and get that area started and i'm going to slowly work away more of the material in the center now the advantage of having that center mass is going to be stability the whole bowl itself and the side walls have a tendency to flex if there's no mass in the center of the bowl leaving that mass there is going to create a ton of stability for you especially if you're turning a really thin wall bowl or if you're doing like a natural edge bowl it prevents those those wings from flapping especially like in a natural or a live edge bowl so now i've picked up that wall thickness i'm going to stop the lathe i need to check this frequently the best way to check it is use your fingers and you can determine really quick where a thick area might be now i'm this is important i'm looking from above i'm looking at the outside of the bowl and the the bevel of the bowl gouge and i'm making those two parallel and instead of bending over and looking into the bowl i'm keeping my eye at where the bowl gouge is inside the bowl compared to the exterior of the bowl so we've got the wall thickness established now we simply just remove more of the center material get that out of the way and then we'll continue down the sidewall the nice thing too about going back and forth with the the left side doing this left cut push cut is that we're using the left wing and we're using the white the right wing let's say that 10 times fast the white wing we're using the left cutting wing and the right cutting wing somewhat equally and they're going to wear down and evenly as well so when we sharpen we always want to sharpen both wings no matter what but if we're just using one of the sides of the bowl gouge the other side is kind of getting sharpened needlessly so that's something that keep in mind here it's keeps your tools sharp longer as to work from both sides so i'm right here i mean like i said i'm using the left side of the bowl gouge always always readjusting that tool rest to give us the most support possible now i'm going to be using the right side of the bowl gouge when i'm making left to right cuts and i'm just slowly making light cuts and taking the material down to where i match the previous wall thickness now the camera is set up so you're looking inside the bowl but i'm standing above this and i'm trying to determine where the bowl gouge is in relationship to the exterior of the bowl blank here i'm making a really light cut picking up that previous area that was left off now we'll stop the lathe and check it again you feel anything that's out of line or not looking right there this is this is the time to address it the other aspect of using this technique is you don't want to go back up the walls here i'm changing and putting in my curved tool rest so that i can get a little bit better support inside this curve we don't want to go back up the walls so as that center mass is being removed those walls the side walls of the bowl hat will have more of a tendency to flex if you go back up to the top of that bowl and try to turn it again you could run into the fact that that might be flexing and you can have problems with an uneven cut and or damaging the bowl because it's it you get a catch and it damages the wood on the rim so essentially what you do with this technique is you start from the rim and work your way down but you don't go back up to where you've where you've been before because again that center mass is gone it's not supporting the the bowl now this bowl has relatively thicker walls because this wood is so soft if i were to make this a thin wall bowl it would be so fragile that it would it would simply break if it ever fell or anything like that so i'm making these walls a little bit thicker so the flex isn't really so much of a factor on this particular bowl but it's just a good principle to practice is to not go back up those walls now i'm finding a high spot right here and one of the ways to make sure you just deal with just that high spot is to mark it with a pencil and you can use an open flute approach you can see here i'm almost i'm at 12 o'clock there but i'm making a really light cut just across the top of that high spot you want to be very careful when you have the flute open that much because if you're if you grab the wood too hard you're going to get a nasty catch so here i'm taking the side wall down again and picking it right where i left off really light cuts there and now i'm going to blend all of those edges together with one light pass all right and we'll keep removing that center area there's something that's kind of therapeutic about making these grooves and it's almost like a zen garden or something where there's it's just uh very relaxing to cut those grooves now this would be a good location for a micro bevel bowl gouge but i wanted to take the challenge and just do this entire bowl with one bowl gouge and this is my 55 degree swept back bowl gouge the 55 degrees is really close to the 65 degrees of the of the micro bevel if you want to learn more about the micro bevel bulk gouge check out my video called secret weapon the micro bevel bowl gouge and it'll explain all the details but again this this bull gouge is this is my main go-to bowl gouge it's a 55 degree swept back bowl gouge and it can do almost anything that's why i like it so much here i really want to check the wall thickness feel for any high spots because we're getting really close to the base of this and we want to make sure we've dealt with everything we need to deal with right here again there's a very very light cut i've got that flute very open but i'm just making a very light cut that's feeling better now i need to remove that nub in the center and then merge everything so we've got a nice smooth curve in the base of this bowl so i'm going to slowly work this high spot off and i have to remember to go slow right at the center that's the slowest moving part of the entire bowl to understand that a little bit better go check out my video on uh wood lathe speed [Applause] and now i'm kind of backed up a little bit made a really light cut to merge all this together i'm gonna do it one more time super light cut to merge all the sections together and bring it together right at the center and there we are look at that spalt isn't that amazing it's incredible what nature does all right so now it's time to sand it i'm not going to bore you guys with all the details of sanding but essentially what i'm doing here is i'm working through my grits i'm working through actually started at 80 because i had such a issue with that in grain i want to smooth out that end grain as much as possible so i turn with the lathe on or sand with the lathe on and then i stop the lathe and then i touch up areas that need to be touched up touch up areas where there's scratch marks things of that nature in this case i'm working on that in green and then i just work through my grits and i usually stop at 320. now if you want to learn more about how to sand wood bowls check out this video i've got it covers all the details about how i sand my wood bowls it's not a process to overlook you basically want to make sure that you're doing a good job sanding but you also don't have to be so tedious with it that it becomes annoying because it's it's obviously not the most exciting thing but it's um it's pretty important if you want to have a good a good bowl as a conclusion now one of the big things that i teach about sanding wood bowls is don't don't sand the center of the bowl with the lathe running because it's almost impossible to sand right up to the center point and what happens is if you sand up to that center point and then go beyond it then you've sanded this around the center point twice and when you do that you're gonna make this this weird little groove right around the very middle of the bottom of the bowl so instead go up to the center point but don't hit the center point with the lathe running and then with the lathe off just hand sand that center area you see here i always stop at the center point i don't go up to the center point now i've rounded off the inside of this rim too where it connects with the side walls and now i'm going to sand that center point by hand i'm just going to go over it with the grain i'm going to flip it and do it from both directions so i don't get any kind of ruts forming in there and then i go through the grits i go 80 120 180 240 and then 320. i do the exterior and the interior and get all of that sanded so it's all taken care of i'm being really careful with that the way i'm working around this the rim there because that's actually shaping that curved inside curved rim so it's becoming part of the design there i want the outside to remain relatively crisp and sharp but i want the inside rim to be curved all right so now it's time to take the bowl off the lathe and off the face plate i better put something underneath that so i don't damage that rim so i'm going to take the faceplate off now we still have this big bottom on this now some people i've seen do turnings without using a chuck and they'll they'll just cut it off with a saw well that's going to leave a really ugly flat bottom and i don't like that at all so we're not going to do that instead what i'm going to do is i'm going to take this chunk of wood that i've turned a long time ago it's just rough turned it's a cylinder and i'm going to attach the face plate to this cylinder this cylinder is going to become a jam chuck so i'm going to put this on the lathe and we're going to go ahead and shape it i'm going to i'm going to curve the outside of it and then shape the outside so it's true right now it's just a rough piece of wood now if you want to learn all about how to uh make a jam chuck and and what they're all about check out my video on jam chucks so i'm curving the outside of this and getting that smoothed out what i want to do is i want the tip of this to to match or at least roughly match or fit the interior of the the bowl that we just turned i'm going to go ahead and make a push cut here to trip the sides of this it doesn't take a lot of time to make the jam chuck and the cool thing about the jam truck is you can you can make multiple ones different sizes in that and you can also reshape them if you need to for another turning later or they almost become universal where you can you can use them over and over again without doing anything to them so i'm going to take the bowl and just check kind of looking down in there yeah this is going to fit pretty well there so let me clean up the end of this now the very tip of this you don't want it to come to a point otherwise it's going to kind of drill a little you know divot inside the the base of your bowl so instead what you want is you want to be a divot inside the the jam chuck here you can see i'm making a slightly concave and that's going to give me a nice ring where the jam chuck will contact the inside of the bowl so instead of the jam chuck coming to a point it's got a nice ring in there so i put a piece of foam packing material in there to secure it so it doesn't damage the inside of the bowl that we just finished sanding and i'll bring the tail stock up and now i'm going to match the tail stock right up to that little point that was on there originally when we were on the lathe the first time so now i'm going to go ahead and start removing the area at the base of this bowl it's kind of like removing the tenon so everything i'm doing here is similar so if you want to check out this video i've got about removing the tenon you're going to learn about how i'm merging in the shape of the of the bowl here and removing this material check out that video so right now what i'm doing is i'm i'm taking the the sides of this bowl down i'm kind of shaping the foot of the bowl and merging that shape into the side of the bowl at the same time just kind of eyeballing it now you want to look across at the whole piece as you're turning it kind of design wise to see what you're what you're getting and what you want so i'm liking the way this works now this is kind of an unsupported cut here but i'm doing this just to finish up this little bit of area here and i'm making it super light so it shouldn't be tearing out in grain too much all right it's looking good now i need to merge that little seam together with the existing side of the bowl and the way i'm doing this i'm positioning the tool rest so i've got about 90 degrees support for the bowl gouge and now i'm using a shear scrape the shear scrape is really nice for making a really light subtle refinement to the exterior of your bowl and what it does is i'm basically just shaving off the area between that cut that i just made and the original shape of the bowl and that's looking pretty good now i'm going to get some of that other material at the base this is all that waste material that has the screw holes in it and getting all that out of the way just making a push cut straight into the headstock now i want to start truing up the the foot of the bowl so i'm going to make a really light cut on the side of the bowl foot so that i've got a really clean edge there and then i'm going to true up the the actual foot that will be sitting on the table top so i've got a nice flat flush area there now i want the inside to be concave a little bit i don't want this to be completely flat so it potentially wobbles around we want the inside to be removed a little bit and concave now some people will just stop here again and just cut this off with a with a saw and you can do that but there's really no reason why you can't take the time and shape the foot of the bowl and make it make it really nice now i'm gonna go through all the grits again and sand this transition area from what i just removed to the edge of the bowl and i won't bore you with all of those sanding videos now i'm going to nibble away this interior again i'm going to make a little bit more concave here and a little nub there well i have to be careful because i already know this wood is dry and brittle and i'm not going to take a chance i'm going to reduce it a bit here but i'm not going to try to turn this off if you want to see what happened in this video about the nutty bowl you can see what happens when you try to turn with that nub that has got compromised wood on it yeah i actually threw that nutty bowl off the lathe and it's all there you can watch it so go check that out so i'm going to turn this down probably right about here that's going to do it and i'm going to go get my little japanese saw and cut that and cut the rest of that nub off now i've got to be really careful here that the saw doesn't accidentally touch the edge of the foot and scratch up that the foot area so i gotta release the pressure on the tail stock too because it's it's binding up the saw so i'm gonna release it just a little bit more and there we go now i've got the nub is removed there's a little bit there and that can that'll easily sand off i usually sand off the nub of the foot of the bowl with about a 120 grit maybe 180. what you want to do is you want to work a little bit on one side and then flip the bowl over so you don't you're not making a divot anywhere that way you have it nice and balanced flip it over and then just kind of balance it off and that nice little spalt line in there is telling me when i've got everything positioned just right and everything's smoothed off all right well here it is check this out i've got to tell you this spalted poplar keeps surprising me with each piece that i turn the colors and the patterns are just absolutely stunning just an absolute gorgeous piece from a relatively plain type of wood but once that spalt is introduced in it it just gets absolutely stunning so now the real question is why would you want to turn a bull without using a four jaw chuck well maybe you want to win a bet with your woodworking friends that's one reason but usually the main reason is is that these little guys are not cheap and if you're just getting started in wood bowl turning you may not want to commit to the to the cost of buying one of these right off the bat if you're turning spindles or pins or things of that nature and you kind of want to experiment with turning wood bowls using the face plate and the end-to-end mount method that i showed you in this video is a great way to start and see what you think about turning wood bowls and once you get into it you're probably going to find that you're going to want to get yourself a four jaw chuck because it just makes things a lot easier but in the meantime you can do with just a face plate and you can get some great results thank you so much for watching this video if you've liked it do me a huge favor click that like button if you're not subscribing currently i don't know why you're not subscribing because i've got tons of great videos for you so please subscribe i need you to subscribe it helps the channel it helps everything so please subscribe and if you've ever turned a wood bull without a four jaw chuck leave me a comment below and tell me all about it what method did you use did you use a face plate did you put a glue block on what did you use and how did you turn that bowl without a four jaw chuck so as always like i like to end my videos until next time happy turning you

Channel: Turn A Wood Bowl

Views: 210,667

Rating: 4.9162831 out of 5

Keywords: Wood Bowl Without A Chuck Woodturning Video, wood bowl without a chuck, no chuck, bowl turning, wood turning, faceplate turning, wood bowl, bowl turning techniques, bowl turning basics, wood bowls, woodturning videos, how to, wood bowl turning, bowl gouge, woodturning techniques, bowl gouge technique, four jaw chuck, wood lathe chuck, wood lathe turning, woodturning, wood turned bowl, kent weakley, turnawoodbowl, woodturning a bowl for beginners, faceplate turning on lathe

Id: hV3FVE-Xq74

Length: 49min 25sec (2965 seconds)

Published: Sat Dec 05 2020