Wood Turned Bowl Video – Old Oak Rock Hard

it's time to make a bowl out of this rock hard piece of oak [Music] hi i'm kent and welcome to turn a wood bowl today we're going to turn this very old piece of oak this piece of wood was given to me by tim in pennsylvania thank you tim tim got it from a salvage company that salvages old buildings and barns and it's believe it or not this was just a cut off what a beautiful cut off so we're going to take a look at this it's got some beautiful saw marks on it that appear to be a very large circular saw i would love to have seen the saw that cut this originally this also has what appears to be almost no moisture in it at all it is very dense very heavy it's rock hard and that is part of the reason tim sent it to me he wanted to know how we can best deal with wood that is really hard and how we can turn that efficiently when we get it taken to the lathe so that's what we're going to do today and i think what i'm going to do is i think i'm going to turn a slightly closed rim where the rim comes in just a touch bowl out of this particular blank and we'll see how it turns out so let's dive in and get turning i want to make sure i get the most out of this bull blank so i'm going to use a compass and find the very edge of the piece at the bandsaw when i'm cutting this i want to make sure i don't go inside that circle at all if i go inside that circle then i need to basically reduce the entire bull blank by that new lower dimension so it's better to be outside the line than inside that line at any point so you'll see here on the corners i'm basically going to have a little bit of excess that's sticking out but that's no big deal i'll just turn that away i just want to make sure i don't go inside that line and while you can see that this this wood is very hard and it's really working that blade i'm trying not to push the the blank through too quickly but it is really really hard before i even start at the lathe i'm going to get everything sharpened up this is my half inch 55 degree bevel swept back bowl gouge i'm going to sharpen that first and then i'm going to take a moment to also sharpen my 5 8 inch 55 degree bevel swept back bowl gouge these both have the same profile so they're both in the same config configuration on the sharpening station so it's best just to sharpen both them at the same time this is interesting there's a little build up there you can see on the bevel and i have to wonder it's like cooking you know when you cook with sugars at high heat in a pan they'll stick and they'll burn and they'll kind of caramelize and i'm wondering the heat of the bowl gouge the bowl i turned previously was a a wet piece and i'm wondering if it takes the sugars out of the wood and burns those onto the side of the bowl blank just kind of an interesting thought there okay so i'm going to mount the bulb blank between centers on the lathe this is between a four jaw drive center and the tail stock and i have the grain oriented so the pith is on the outside or the bottom of the bowl that's similar to the way i would mount a live edge or a natural edge bowl now i'm using the tail stock loosening it up and readjusting to make sure i've got this seated properly and i'm essentially want to make sure i've got a relatively flat top edge so i'm not wasting any extra material i'm going to slowly bring the lathe up to speed and the first cut i'm going to make is across the end grain here and if you take my wood bull turning start to finish online e-course this is the first cut that we're going to make together with the bowl gouge and in that course i will teach you all of the steps for using the bowl gouge and after you've followed all the exercises in the course and practiced you're going to feel very confident using the bull gouge okay so i'm making a few passes here basically clean that up there's still a couple flat spots here you can see but i'm just slowly bringing that down i don't want to waste any material here so i'm just going to slowly creep up on that maximum diameter of this bowl it seems to be cutting pretty well you really want to make sure you're riding the bevel when you're making these cuts because you can see this wood is so dry and so hard it doesn't have tear out like most woods do it's just leaving scratch marks it's almost like cutting a stone a little bit of flat spot here so i'm going to make one more light cut what i'm doing is i'm orienting the flute to the right if the flute straight up is 12 o'clock then i've got it oriented to the right in about one 130 and i'm pushing against the along the tool rest not the bull blank i'm just trying to make a nice smooth pass along the tool rest and clean up that edge all right now i'm going to do a face cut if you take the wood bowl turning online e-course this is the second cut you're going to do with the bowl gouge it's going to make a nice clean smooth face cut here just to clean up that bottom of the bowl so that we can see what everything looks like and then have an area to establish the tenon i'm gonna mark the tenon location with my dividers and then i'll continue making those push cuts to remove the material around the tenon i have the bowl at about the highest speed that i want to take it it's very symmetrical and balanced however the material is very hard and it's cutting slow so what i need to do in this situation is to slow down my pace so instead of just making a quick pass across there like i might do with a green bull blank i need to slow down to make sure i get a nice clean pass while i'm making this cut so i've established the tenon and now i'm going to create a shoulder creating the tenon with the shoulder gives me a lot of leeway later when i want to shape that foot of the bowl okay so now with the tenon and the shoulder established i can start shaping the curve of the exterior of the bowl because a sharp cutting edge is at a premium here with this bowl gouge i'm basically able to use both wings when i was making those initial cuts to the right i was using the right wing and the right tip now i'm using the left wing and the left tip by making a push cut out along the curve now i'm going to change the position of the tool rest and i'm going to make a pulling scraping cut to remove some of that material what i want to do is i want a nice smooth curve that goes all the way through the foot of the bowl up to the apex of the curve of the side of the bowl you can see with the bowl gouge in almost a horizontal position this is a scraping cut this is designed to remove material relatively quickly and it's actually working quite well that left wing is doing a great job this is why i love the swept back bowl gouge because it has so many different capabilities in different different situations i can pull out this scrape cut and shape this bowl very quickly by just making that pulling scraping cut okay so now i'm going to turn around and cut in the supported grain direction and finish out this curve or better define this curve going up to the apex of this bowl when i say apex i'm going to be doing a closed rimmed bowl meaning the top of the bowl and the rim is going to be a little bit narrower than the widest part of the bowl which is this outer curve here now i'm using a sheer scrape shear scrape is just like a scraping cut except i'm dropping the handle of the bowl gouge and i'm closing the flute so i'm basically just shaving the surface of the wood and what's great about this this is a super way to take out tool marks or any kind of imperfections you can do some light shaping with it but this is more of a refinement cut to smooth the surface of the bowl i do have a video all about shear scraping if you want to check that out it's in my library here on youtube okay so now with the bottom established i'm going to work on the rim first thing i want to do is true up that top edge and i'm going to do that with a scraping cut i want to close that flute so i don't get a nasty catch and i'm going to clear away a little bit of the material so i've got a smooth edge and i can see exactly where the top of the bowl is going to be in order to have a supported grain cut if you've seen my supported grain video which is which way do i turn with a bowl gouge this is the answer to the trick question you're going to want to check that out if you haven't seen it already okay i'm creating a little bead that i'm going to have on the rim of this bowl and the bowl gouge is doing an okay job but i really need to define that edge a little bit better so i'm actually going to use my carbide scraper to get underneath that and make a really nice defined edge on the bottom portion of that bead then i'll come in and refine that a little more you can see how hard this wood is and how the the corner of that scraper is just making ugly marks so i'm going to reposition the tool rest so that i've got about a 90 degree support and i'm going to use that shear scrape to smooth the curve and the apex or the high point of the bowl you can tell it's a sheer scrape that i have the handle down lower because of the shavings they're usually more fine and thin on a shear scrape all right it's time to sharpen again now i'm using a depth gauge here i set my depth to two inches with this particular sharpening system and some people do like an inch and three quarters but i use two inches whatever depth you determine you just need to be consistent with it i actually have the plans for a diy depth gauge just like the one i use here in my shop if you go to turn a wood bowl dot com forward slash shop you can see that the plans for that okay so now i've repositioned the tool rest and i'm going to use a light scraping cut to take out those tool marks underneath the bead and smooth that material and bring that edge or that side of the exterior up to the high point of the outside of the bowl so essentially we're working up to that the curved highest point of the exterior i started to shape the rim with my bowl gouge and then it's just it's too big to get in there so what i'm using here is my 3 8 inch spindle detail gouge this has a nice long point that can get down into that groove and clean it up i usually use this tool to shape the dovetail on my tenons but this is also a great application for it here now remember don't ever use a spindle gouge for removing large amounts of material if you're liking this video do me a huge favor and click that like button below the screen you have the thumbs up go ahead and click that thanks okay so the exterior of the bowl is complete so i'm going to go ahead and sand that while i have it in this orientation and i have good access to the bottom of the bowl what i do is i sand with the lathe running and i start i'm starting here at 120 grit and i will work through 120 180 grit 240 and 320 to get a really nice smooth finish i typically turn the lathe speed down to about half of what i was using when i was turning okay now i'm going to come in with that 3 8 inch detail spindle gouge and i'm going to shape the dovetail of the tenon just pushing inward at about a 10 11 degree angle and i'm also going to clean up the surface of that shoulder because that's going to sit right on the top of the four jaw chuck all right so the outside of the bowl is complete now we can turn it around and take out the inside i'm going to pull out that drive center and i'm going to put on my four jaw chuck now now this is the chuck that actually doesn't seat really well and that's why i have that little washer on there is for this particular chuck this it helps fill in that gap you don't want to have any gaps or any kind of loose fittings coming from the headstock through your turning otherwise you're going to have vibrations and you're going to have issues while you're turning you want to make sure you have the secure connection and a true connection so everything rotates properly all right so i'm back using my half inch 55 degree bevel swept back bowl gouge this is my go-to bowl cash i use for almost everything that i do is just the true workhorse and if you want to turn a bowl and you're not you're looking for a tool to get and you're not sure which one the half inch bowl gouge is one to you to get okay so i'm going to be working the the rim area and i'm going to be working the wall first i'm not going to core from the center out i want to control that wall thickness and the rim and have good control over that if i leave a massive material in the center of this bowl it's going to give me good stability for doing that but i'm going to clear out a little area so that i can start working the inside and get that wall thickness established you can see here the rotation that i'm making this i'm reached reaching clear across the lathe and i have my left hand stable and steady and that's kind of my pivot point right there on the tool rest and only my right arm and the handle of the bowl gouge are turning think of it like a rudder on a boat we want that pivot point to be a really solid anchor right there on the tool rest but you can see how far i need to reach to make this cut because i'm cutting in underneath that rim okay i'm going to use a scraping cut here i need to be really careful because we have this is side grain mounted again so we have ingrained side grain coming around and if i'm not careful here i can get a kick back and i can have some issues with the material kicking back the bowl gouge and scratching it up and i don't want that to happen so you just make really light scrapes there to shape that the curve of that rim now i'm going to reduce the center a little bit more and get some of that material out but i've noticed that my tool is not cutting so well so it's time to go back to the sharpening station if you need to learn more about shaping and sharpening your tools check out my tool sharpening for wood bowl turning online e-course where i cover everything you need to know about shaping and sharpening all of your tools for turning wood bowls it's all in video form and there's each lesson is well indexed there's a ton of information there okay after i returned to the bowl i can see immediately that sharpening the bowl guides was the thing to do there i probably would a little bit longer than i needed to this wood is so hard it's a little bit tricky to see or to determine when you really need to sharpen because the tool is not cutting as quickly as i normally does with most other woods i'm going to reposition my tool rest here and get it right in there so i get good support to make this delicate cut in the inside curve again i'm reaching all the way across that lathe and i'm starting with the flute closed at 90 degrees so i don't get a kickback i have a video all about kickbacks and you're going to want to see that if you don't know how to deal with kickbacks or what causes kickbacks it's really important to understand that so check out that video okay so with that wall inside wall defined towards the rim and down i'm going to take some of the material out of the center here i have the tool rest a little bit high here so i'm going to drop that down i also have a video all about tool rest and if you've got questions about the tool rest check out that video just doing light push cuts here again with the bowl gouge flute positioned about the 1 130 position as i move across i'm not moving my hands or arms i'm pretty much have my hands and arms locked and i'm just doing a shift forward with my body weight there you can see too this is these are roughing cuts so it doesn't really matter what happens at this point but you can see when you push through that center how it can tear out the fibers when we get down to the very bottom of the bowl we want to make sure that that final cut through the center is nice and slow and we let the bowl gouge do the cutting and we don't force out that center portion and rip out fibers because that can cause a problem with the bottom inside of the bowl all right so now i've got the bowl gouge rotated to the left at about the 10 10 30 position and i'm clearing out more material so i can get down to that wall on the inside i'll flip the bowl gouge around so that the flute is at about the 10 10 or the 1 130 position and then i will continue shaping that interior wall as i'm making this cut i have the flute almost completely open to 12 o'clock i'm only doing that when i'm making very light cuts if i get too aggressive with that open position i'm going to get a catch and i don't want that so i'm going to start up at the top and i'm going to make a very light cut and move around now part of the reason why i have the flute completely open is so that the bevel can actually rotate around that really tight curve that curve is a little tighter than the length of my bevel now this is the view that i'm from where i'm standing this is how i'm turning i'm not bent over looking into the bowl and that's one of the tips that i have in my video about how to improve the inside of the bowl you might want to check that out as well i'm using the scraping cut just a very light scraping cut to shape the inside of the rim up to where it meets the wall and i'm rounding that out so it's blends in with the rest of the rim use your hands and and frequently test the surface but also the wall thickness and make sure it's what you want before you progress it doesn't cost anything to stop the lathe and take a quick check you obviously want to do that before you go too far and you make an area too thin unfortunately i think we all have to go through making thin walled areas in our bowls before we learn that lesson really well all right so i'm taking more of the interior material out in making way so what i'm doing is i'm working down that wall from top to bottom and once i've established the wall thickness to my liking then i move down to the next section and blend that into the previous section typically don't go back up to the top to to work that because when that core is removed there's going to be a higher chance of vibration on those outside walls although this piece of wood is so rock solid i don't know that there's that much vibration occurring on those outside walls i know that the moisture content of this piece is very very low and i would think that there's going to be almost no movement in this piece after i've turned it typically most bulls have a little bit of moisture in them and that rim might shape or move just a little bit after the bull is turned and obviously more wet bulls will change more dramatically there's a good chance this bull won't change at all it is rock solid okay so i'm liking that thickness i'm going to take that inside down and get ready to do the bottom inside of the bowl you want to take just enough material or the width of the material that the bowl gouge will will actually cut well and it's taken about a half inch or maybe um a centimeter or so of material there but you can see how those it's ripping out and making it is a rough cut there because i pushed through that quickly so there's almost like a brittle sense to this i wouldn't call it brittle though it's not fragile but the tear marks are so small and tight it feels like it's crumbling versus tearing like most woods do if you if you get too aggressive with them you want to take your time here and make really light cuts what i'm doing is i'm merging that previous wall thickness with the current wall thickness now there's a high spot up here and it's kind of in that indentation area and i can't i'm not feeling really comfortable getting in there with a bowl gouge so i'm going to use my round nose scraper now i've got a video all about round nose scrapers you might want to check that out what i'm going to do here is i need to i need that to cut a little bit better so i'm going to actually pull a burr here in a second but before i do that i'm going to mark the location that i want to work so between those two lines it's a little too thick and i want to thin that here i'm using a hardened steel burnishing tool to pull a burr on that tip and what's going to happen is there's a very small microscopic burr there that's actually going to cut more than it's going to scrape and by doing that i'm going to be cutting that material and having a cleaner finish i deal with the how to how to sharpen and shape a round nose scraper in my tool sharpening course as well and i also go over exactly how to pull a bur and do this technique so you're going to want to check that out all right it's feeling pretty good except now we're getting down to the final cuts and that's always a good time to go sharpen the previous sharpenings i had the camera point of view almost from my point of view because i wanted to share that with you and i was it was a little bit awkward actually doing the sharpening portion this is a little bit better at the camera off to the side so you can actually see more fluidly what i'm doing i'm just cleaning up that bevel that's all you have to do okay so i want to make sure that i'm going nice and slow here and making a good finishing cut across the bottom of this bowl you need to remember that the center of the bowl is turning at a slower speed than the rest of the bowl so we need to slow down our pace and let the the gouge do the cutting right at the center of the bottom of the bowl if that if you need more information on that check out my lathe speed video i go into great detail and explain all the different aspects of the speed okay we've got a little bit there's going to be another pass here this is going to be a relatively open cut i'm going to pick up the edge there by resting my bevel on the previous cut and just lightly working through that and before i do anything else i want to touch and feel this and i'm going to do one more very light cut to kind of merge those areas all together we have a very thin section here probably less than a millimeter maybe less than half a millimeter it's getting a little bit thicker towards the bottom i want to go nice and slow here and just let the tool do the cutting there we go excellent now inside that rim i'm going to use a two inch sanding disc my main disc that i use most often is a three inch disc but i really want to work that inside edge with a smaller disc so i get down in there this is a two inch sanding disc and i'm going to go through the grits in the same manner what i'm doing here a little bit different is i will sand with the lathe running and then i will stop and i will sand with the grain and i will do i will clean it up that way i'm also going to do some hand sanding right now of that beaded exterior rim and again i'm going from 120 up to 320 that's 120 180 240 and then 320 grits now here i'm using the three inch sanding pad i don't go across the center because that will cause problems with the shape of the bottom of the inside of the bowl instead i will turn with the lathe running then i will turn with the lathe off and i will clean up that center i've got a video all about sanding wood bowls you might want to check that out as well all right it's looking really good it's time to reverse this and we'll take that tenon off and shape the foot of the bowl i'm going to switch out the four jaw chuck here i have a smaller one and i'm going to change this out for my larger and this jam chuck is is appears pretty large but it's actually the right size for the interior of this bowl i've got a video all about jam chucks too if you want to check that out it's a quick very inexpensive way to reverse a bowl and work the foot area okay so i'm going to pull up the tail stock and i'm going to match that little indentation that was made originally when we first started and by matching that it should have a pretty much a true rotation and we do now i'm going to start nibbling away that tenon because we don't need it anymore i'm using push cuts in towards the headstock that's always a good cut to use when you have an end-to-end mounted piece like this because you're putting pressure into the headstock versus laterally against it i'm going to true up the foot and make sure we got a nice flat foot that's going to rest on the table well and then to get inside this i've i've been using my carbide flat scraper it helps to find that foot the edge of the foot what i want to do is i want the shape of the bottom of the bowl to be nice fluid round so that that round shape moves through the center of the bottom of the bowl if you were to take that foot ring off of the bowl you should have a nice smooth fluid round bowl with no foot that's the idea of what i'm doing here so i'm back to the half inch bowl gouge i'm using that to shape the material inside and take the little nub down just a bit i'm also going to take advantage of this still being on the lathe to sand up the area around the foot and get that nice and smooth this wood is pretty cool you gotta you can't help but wonder what the heck where has this been all its life you know was it part of a barn and how many generations of families has it seen and it's just i don't know i love turning pieces of wood like this it's just very very cool here i'm using my 3 8 inch spindle detail gouge to take off the little nub we're going to reduce this down as small as possible and i'm going to at the same time curve the bottom of the bowl to complete that bottom curve that we talked about so i'm going to pick up the edge there and just very lightly take off just a thin area now i'm going to push into that nub in just a second to sever it apart but i'm going to make it a little narrower first if you're not comfortable with this you can just stop here and you can cut that off with a knife and sand it or you can cut it off with a small hand saw what i like to do is i'll push forward and apply pressure but then i'll also turn off the lathe and i'm going to sever those fibers and break that nub off and now we've got a completed bowl i just need to sand that area where the tenon was and you definitely want to pad that on the jamb chuck so you don't scuff up the sanding that was done earlier so i'm going to use that two inch mandrel again to sand the area in that you just want to be very careful not to touch that foot rim because the sand sanding disc will obviously nick that up and make a mark on that rim and you're going to rotate this around so that you get a nice even sanding finish on the inside you don't want to make any ruts or flat spots so i usually sand it from both sides with the green and i just kind of rub that back and forth to blend it in all right so i'm going to use my burning tool to sign this what's funny is every wood is different and and requires a different temperature the temperature there is actually pretty good and the line looks pretty good i'm usually used to a little bit darker line with wetter woods so i turned up the temperature and now it's a little bit too dark so it's you kind of you've got to play with it and determine what works best so i took the temperature down just a touch there you just need to experiment with it but since i haven't turned 100 plus year old oak before i didn't know what temperature to use here but now now i've got a rough idea i just take my time to sign this i use a chisel tip in a lot of instances there's other pen tools that work really well with signing as well all right now i'm going to apply my favorite finish there's a i've got a video for this this is tried and true's original finish it is made up of linseed oil and beeswax that's it there's no other chemicals there's no dryers there's no metals in it there's nothing it's linseed oil and beeswax that's why i love it so much it's 100 food safe it's just a beautiful finish it doesn't it'll it'll dry with a luster to it it won't have as much shine as you're seeing here when it's going on wet but it has a beautiful finish and it's just a gorgeous gorgeous finish to use on your wood bowls the application process is very simple you essentially just want to have enough finish on the surface to coat the surface so in other words if you see finish on the surface you've got enough there it doesn't go on thick it needs to be a nice thin coat and after an hour you want to come back with a clean dry cloth and wipe the surface and take off any high spots or thick spots because this material cures and it's got a it works its way into the wood it's just actually a really nice finish you don't want a thick area there because that will kind of gum up and you obviously don't want that and there it is boy i wish this wood could talk because i'm sure it has some wonderful stories look at those medullary rays well there it is a beautiful piece of american history right here summed up in this really gorgeous piece of dry dense very hard oak now one of the lessons we learned in this and the question that was asked to me was how do we turn really hard woods and the answer is with a very sharp tool but that's how we want to turn all the time and that requires sharpening and paying attention to your tool and recognizing when it's starting to become a little bit dull or it's taking a little more effort to cut compared to before that's when you want to go sharpen again i think we sharpened five times during this turning so it wasn't out of hand but we really needed to sharpen there were a couple times when i actually got pretty dull and i needed to go back i should have gone back a little bit earlier and this this wood is absolutely beautiful you gotta you gotta wonder where this has been and what it seemed you know it's probably at least a couple hundred years old the tree probably grew for a period of time maybe another 100 years before that what did this wood see in its lifetime it would be amazing to see that i love history and i love turning so those two things are always going through my head when i'm turning a piece like this and this is just a gorgeous piece of oak i'm just really happy with this piece i love this little simple beaded rim here and i love how the center worked out here and again that's by turning those grains upside down essentially if we had the whole log there would be bark out here and this would basically be the same orientation as turning a natural edge or a live edge bowl but that has been that was cut off of it when it was milled into a board so we don't have that feature here but the orientation of those rings is the same way and that's the pattern you will see in the bottom of the live edge or a natural edge bowl if we flipped it the other way it would look more like a traditional bowl and would have larger rings in there so it's just a personal preference but it's one of those things to be aware of while you're turning all right if you've liked this video do me a huge favor click that like button below the screen you know the one with the thumbs up yeah go ahead and click that for me i greatly appreciate it it helps me with the youtube algorithm and it helps get this video out to others so they can enjoy it as well thank you guys for watching and i greatly appreciate you and until next time happy turning [Music] you

Channel: Turn A Wood Bowl

Views: 40,830

Rating: 4.9594283 out of 5

Keywords: Wood Turned Bowl Video – Old Oak Rock Hard, oak bowl, oak, hard wood, Barn wood, bowl making, wood turning bowl, bowl turning, woodturning, woodturning bowl, wood bowl, bowl turning videos, bowl turning tools, wood turned bowl video, woodturning videos, woodturning for beginners, wood lathe, how to turn a bowl, wood turning, turning wood, bowl turning techniques, Turn a wood bowl, bowl turning basics, bowl turning on a lathe, Kent Weakley, wood turning tools, Wood bowls

Id: NLC0LXJlnpw

Length: 37min 16sec (2236 seconds)

Published: Sat Feb 27 2021