Woodturning Square Bowl — American History — Wormy Chestnut Video

today we're going to turn some american history [Music] hi i'm kent and welcome to turn a wood bowl today we're going to turn a piece of wormy chestnut now i'm going to explain what wormy chestnut is in just a minute but a while back i turned a natural edge bowl out of a piece of american chestnut that is extinct and when i said extinct wow there were lots of people that that sent comments saying well you know the american chestnut is not extinct so i did a little more research and i actually found the proper term to use and that proper term is functionally extinct the american chestnut had a range from maine through georgia along the appalachian mountains and in 1904 the blight was introduced to the american chestnut they estimate there were four to five billion with a b chestnut trees throughout that range and between 1904 through 1950 the blight crept across the appalachian mountains and wiped out all of the chestnut trees now the interesting thing about this blight was it took out everything above the ground the root systems of these trees and the root systems of some of these trees that were already several hundred years old still exist now those root systems are healthy underground and for whatever reason the blight doesn't affect them but they'll send up saplings and those saplings can actually get pretty large sometimes 15 20 years old but then the blight comes and wipes them out again the full functionality of this tree and the full capabilities of the american chestnut are extinct and wiped out the proper term is functionally extinct the other thing that's really interesting about the american chestnut is there are outliers there are trees that are in outlying areas that have not been affected by the blight especially out west there's some in oregon there's some in other states that were never affected and they're somewhat large and they they're in their full glory however a full range of the original american chestnuts does not exist and cannot exist while the blight is still effective there are researchers that are working on cross pollinating various chestnuts to create a version of the american chestnut that might be able to resist blight someday but right now the american chestnut tree is functionally extinct all right so that brings us to what we're going to turn today this piece of wood is called wormy chestnut now why would this be called wormy chestnut first of all i have to thank steven from west virginia for providing this for me actually his grandfather provided it for him and saved it for him and he's able to share a piece of it with me which is really really cool so think about this if you're a woodworker and this is your main wood source the american chestnut and you know that these trees are being wiped out what are you going to do well as all woodworkers do we're going to save everything so you're especially going to save this this particular piece here looks like it was used previously in some kind of construction there's some nail holes in it and it is a salvaged piece of american chestnut not only were they saving boards from projects but they were salvaging by milling the trees that fell because of the blight these massive trees would basically just succumb to the to the blight and fall over so they were taking that wood and milling it and using it as much as they possibly could so and for whatever reason they called it wormy chestnut now i don't know if there were some of the trees actually had worms in it or that was just the name they called the trees that fell because of the blight but the wormy chestnut is a term that they use but it's american chestnut and that's what this piece is called so we have a piece of salvaged wormy chestnut that we're going to turn and i think what i'm going to do to use the most out of this i'm going to actually make a square bowl this bowl or this blank was provided to me by steven and it's like perfectly square and i'm going to show you that in just a second so let's go ahead and get started okay so the way you can tell if a piece is square is to measure across the diagonals and what i'm measuring here is 14 inches and 3 16 or 36 centimeters and if i go across the opposite section i need to make sure that's exactly the same if it's the same then it's square and sure enough it's 14 and 3 16 and or 36 centimeters this thing is perfectly square so i'm basically going to mark the center of this and then we're going to you're going to start turning but i also have to determine the grain direction now we can see that the pith is would have been up in here somewhere and we've got the rings going this way if i turn this way this kind of the is going like the traditional bowl direction and it's going to give me a pattern inside this bowl that's going to be okay but i would rather go this direction and cut from the top down so in other words we'll make the the bull will be shaped like this across the piece and come back up and what's going to happen is we're cutting through all of those ingredients and we're going to have this really nice graphic pattern on it now this this pith area is off center so it's going to make this design a little bit asymmetrical and there's nothing wrong with that so our bowl is basically going to be shaped something like this and i'm going to bring it right up to the top corners here the corners have got a little bit of ding in them we may have to address that but that that'll be okay and we'll have a base that's somewhere in that area so that's what we're looking to do we're going to make a nice wide square bowl that's going to have a shape like this so using a straight edge i'll go ahead and mark the center on both sides i've got to be careful to set the straight edge back just a little bit so it accounts for the thickness of the pencil we'll do that on both sides that we can easily line up this blank with the drive center and the tail stock on both sides i'm going to use a four spur drive center and make sure i've got the orientation of the bulb length the way i want it and i'm going to pull up the tail stock mounting bulb blanks in this fashion is is really nice because it gives you flexibility to make minor adjustments and with this particular piece i want to make sure that the four corners are lined up with one another and we're not mounted lopsided on the lathe and if we did that we'd be wasting material here so i'm using a pencil held firmly to the tool rest and checking those corners and everything is lined up okay so what i'm going to do is i'm going to start rounding off the bottom portion or the underside of the exterior of this bowl using my 5 8 inch 55 degree bevel swept back bowl gouge if the bowl gouge flute pointing straight up is 12 o'clock then i have this position at about 10 30 to the left as i'm making my cuts from right to left and all i'm trying to do at this point just round that corner off a little bit and we'll take a look at the material and see how it's cutting there's some beautiful grain inside there everything's looking good i'm gonna switch over to my half inch swept back bowl gouge this also has a 55 degree front bevel this is just a slightly more refined tool the different sizes of the bowl gouges will create different size cuts the larger the bowl gouge the larger the cut i don't need a very deep cut here i'm not removing a lot of material so i'm going to use my half inch bowl gouge here now i'm making a face cut to level off the surface here it's kind of taken off that old patina from the wood i need to have a nice level flat area to create the tenon with again using that clock orientation i'm probably about 1 30 maybe 1 o'clock or 1 30 with the angle of the flute as i make this cut from left to right notice how i'm not moving my hands or my arms i'm essentially just shifting my body weight forward and look at that there are worms in here little worms but those are the worms that give this its name all right i'm going to go ahead and mark my tenon using dividers and i'm going to continue removing material to shape that tendon so i wasn't certain if this wood actually had worms in it and now we know those are very cute worms small i've had some some boards that uh or some logs and bull blanks that i've used that have had worm activity in them it looks like a spaghetti bowl made up of hoses instead of spaghetti so those little guys were relatively cute compared to some of the things i've run across and it didn't appear as if they've gone too deep into the wood that's kind of interesting we'll see what the final piece looks like okay so now i have the cylinder for the tenon established and that's going to give me my orientation towards the bottom of the bowl now i need to establish the top edge of the bowl if you'd like to receive regular wood bowl turning tips be sure to go to turn it wood bowl dot com forward slash tips to sign up okay so what i'm doing here is i'm carefully lining up the bevel of the bowl gouge with the shape of the curve that i want to create on the bottom of the bowl now i'm actually going against the supported grain cut and that is deliberate so that i don't knock out too much fibers on the corners of that and here you can see i'm matching up with that sketch that i made earlier which is what i'm looking for to do and now i have established the bottom top corner and the tenon i just need to remove that material in the middle to merge those and make a nice fluid curve across the bottom of this bowl here i'm using a push cut going from right to left with the point of the bowl gouge in the direction that i'm turning at about 10 30. if you're liking this video please do me a huge favor and click that like button below the screen you have the little thumbs up go ahead and click that for me thank you very much so i want to continue making the curve on the bottom of this bowl to merge the tenon to the the front edge of those corners so what i'm doing here is a scraping cut this is more of like a pulling scraping cut a true pull cut has bevel support this is not bevel supported i'm only using that lower wing as a scraping tool at this point to remove that material with the flute almost closed against the surface i just open the top edge of that flute and let the bottom wing act as a scraper and i'm just shifting my body weight backwards pulling across that that cut here's another angle of see how i'm pulling that curve out also you can see the shape of the bowl that i'm trying to accomplish here it kind of drops down and is it's not quite curved enough here and that's what i'm removing the material in that thicker area it's all about shifting body weight almost no motion in the hands or the arms as you can see here i'm just shifting my body weight backwards as i'm making that scraping move yeah and this wormy chestnut is very hard wood and it's dulling my tools pretty quickly so i'm going to need to go ahead and sharpen this pretty frequently so i'll head over to the sharpening station i'm using the one way vera grind sharpening system here this is a homemade depth gauge and i actually have a template for how to make this depth gate depth gauge in my shop over at turner woodbull.com you can also check out my sharpening online course at turn woodbull.com forward slash sharp it doesn't take much to sharpen the the edge but you here you can see i've got a little bit of a dull spot right on that bevel i want to make sure that that's all cleaned up all the way up to the top cutting edge before i return over to the lathe and that looks better when you're working with a an older piece of wood especially like this it's going to be dry and and relatively dense you're going to need to sharpen more often every tree species is different and you never know what you're going to get into until you're experiencing it you just need to pay attention to how your bowl gouge is behaving and how well it's turning or not turning and make sure you're remembering to sharpen that tool frequently ever and again every wood is different there's there's certain trees that if you get them green you they cut like a bar of soap and you can sharpen once and turn a couple bowls and you really don't need to sharpen and then there's other types of wood that you need to sharpen about every 10 minutes so you just need to pay attention to what you need to do here now i've repositioned the tool rest so i've got about a 90 degree support with the bowl gouge and i'm using a sheer scrape a sheer scrape is almost like the scrape we were doing earlier except i'm dropping the handle and i'm just shaving it's a very light cut that's going across here i'm just cleaning up any tool marks or any edges out there on those wings and you can see i've got that the flute was just barely opened i've got a little bit of a flat spot there but that'll be taken care of when we sand now i'm going to use my 3 8 inch spindle detail gouge to cut the dovetail angle on the tenon i'm going to start right on the edge and let the gouge chip get started and then just make a pushing cut in at a slight angle and that's going to be the perfect angle for the dovetails to lock into now i'm going to go ahead and sand the bottom while i've got it nice and exposed here i'm going to sand with the lathe running for a little bit and that's going to help level out the surface but now i'm going to sand with the lathe off and what i'm doing is i'm using the right side of the sanding pad and i'm trying to line that up and keep it in line with the wood grain this that way it'll prevent any scratching of the wood grain areas you just want to take your time and make sure you've got a really nice smooth surface here and i'm starting at 180 and i'll be going from 180 to 220 i'm sorry from 180 to 240 to 320 and then when i change and go to the next grid up i will turn with the lathe running and then i will turn the lathe off and touch up in line with the grain just like we did the previous one okay so it's time to turn the bowl around i'm going to mount this in my four jaw chuck and you want a nice flush surface to the top of the jaws as you can see here if there's any gap there you're going to have vibration and you're you don't have good control over the piece so you want to make sure you've taken your time and made really nice shoulder and tenon and that it sits flushly in the chuck just like that okay so right off the bat i want to work on that corner and i want to make sure that i establish the wall thickness of this bowl so what i'm doing is i'm taking the bowl gouge and i'm lining the bevel and making it parallel to the exterior of the bowl which in this case is the the shape of the bowl on the left side that's the bottom of our bowl so i'm just going to work the material away gradually until i get down to the wall thickness that we'll be using for this piece it's a little tricky because there's with the four corners like this there's always going to be an area that's exposed or vulnerable for having chip out so there's going to be a little bit of that that occurs so we want to make light cuts to try to minimize that as well now what i'm doing is i'm just working away a small area so i have like an opening or a valley to work in here you can see how the bevel of the bowl gouge is parallel to the exterior of the bowl but it's getting a little thick there so i need to make sure that that doesn't continue otherwise we would have a a thin outer corner area and then we'd have a thick inside area instead we want it to be even all the way across so i need to come in a little bit and take out a little more material now you can see it's a pretty neat little effect with the camera here because the corners are leaving so much area exposed it's almost as if you've got x-ray vision and you can see exactly how the bull gouge is going down into that bowl this wood is just incredible to work with it has such a smooth beautiful finish and is durable and strong but lightweight this is probably half the weight of like an oak piece of this size so what i'll do is i'll work an area of the outer wings and then i'll take some of the center out and then work a little more area of the of the wings and and match that wall thickness what i'm doing is i'm leaving that center core in there for stability when that center is in place it makes the outside wings strong and stable and it prevents vibration makes it easier to cut them smoothly so i just work down and create that valley again and then i will take this new area and merge it with the existing wall thickness this wood is really hard it is cutting slow as you can see there that i'm trying to not cut faster than the wood or the bowl gouge will allow and the gouge is sharp but it's taken his time getting through there now you can see how i'm working down to that wall thickness to match up where we started before right there i'm going to take out the material here to bring in the new area and blend the two so they're the same wall thickness then we'll continue knocking down that center area and i'll just work across the bottom of the bowl using this technique i do this technique more than anything i really don't like clearing out bowls from the center outward because i tend to want to have a little more control over my wall thickness and i like to make the exterior walls relatively thin that center mass is larger than it needs to be so i'm going to make several passes face cuts across here just to remove that material quickly with the flute orientation i'm got this almost at one o'clock maybe 12 30 1 o'clock i'm making very light cuts the flute is relatively open but because i'm making such a light cut and the wood is so smooth meaning there's not really anything in it that's going to give me much of an opportunity to have a catch then i'm kind of okay having the flute open this way if you're just starting off you might not want to have it quite so open and these are quick roughing cuts and so the pace of the bowl gouge is a little faster than normal and i'm not leaving a very smooth finish as you can see there you can see the little grooves and tool marks in it if you're looking to make a smooth surface then you want to slow down your pace and take your time and let the tool do a good job cutting what makes those tool marks is you've actually advanced the bull gouge faster and quicker than it can actually cut in the rotations so it's cutting a little bit but then you've moved forward and didn't allow it to cut the material and then it's leaving a gap so it makes it look like an old vinyl record when that happens okay so i created another small valley so that i can come in here and reduce that wall thickness and bring this down to match the previous wall thickness notice how i'm slowing down in these last cuts i use this technique called ahbc's in woodturning there's a technique called the abcs of woodturning which means you anchor the tool meaning on the tool rest and then you rub the bevel and then you start cutting well i like to add h to that where before you rub the bevel you let the heel rub and engage and then you rub the bevel and then you cut especially when you're starting off this is going to make things a lot easier so you don't accidentally engage the tool and get a deep gouge so here i'm going heel bevel and then i'm cutting and i'm making a very light cut to take off that high spot that i marked it's a good idea to mark any high spots that you have and before you cut them that way you focus just on the area that needs attention when you are working with a really deliberate wall thickness like we are here if you get accidentally kind of work an area too much you may have a thinner area compared to everything else and that's something that's really hard to fix because at this point with as much material as removed we cannot safely or accurately go out to those tips of the bowl anymore because they're vibrating enough that you're not going to get a smooth smooth cut you're going to get lots of tool marks catches and possible you know nasty things happening if i try to go cut the ends of the bowl right now so instead we really want to take our time and just make really nice clean cuts with each pass all right so i need to sharpen this tool again and as you can see the sharpening process is not long it is it's pretty straightforward and very quick if you check out the online course i have i actually go into all the shaping as well i will show you how to shape five different bowl gouge profiles for all different purposes as well as all of your other woodturning tools a turning like this is somewhat hypnotic but what i'm really trying to remember in the back of my mind is what the tool is cutting like right now because it's perfectly sharp i just sharpened it and i'm seeing how it's performing and what will happen here over the next few minutes is the performance of that tool will degrade a little bit as it dulls all right i'm switching in for my curved tool rest here to give me a little closer support and what i want to do is i want to pay attention to the fact that that bull gouge is not quite cutting as smoothly as it did right after i sharpened it and as soon as i'm noticing that that's when i really need to go sharpen again because we really want to be cutting with a very sharp tool each and every time we're at the lathe i'm making very light cuts here now we're going to reduce that centers again it's interesting is that passes that are horizontal with the side grain like this a face cut don't tear away that much end grain so you can actually cut in either direction here see the supported grain cut is not that critical if you if you're interested to understand a little bit more about supported grain cut be sure to check out my video on which direction do i cut with a bowl gouge it's kind of mesmerizing watching those corners of this wing go around on the lathe it's a little different than a traditional round bowl now we're getting down to the final thickness of this bowl so i don't want to get aggressive here i want to make light very smooth passes i've got the flute almost open to 12 o'clock it's it's between 12 15 and 12 30 here and just make a light pass into that center and go ahead and check that out oh it's looking really good there are some light tool marks there but those will come out with the sanding okay so i'm going to sand the interior exactly how i sanded the exterior i will sand a bit with the lathe running and then i will turn the lathe off and then sand with the grain also i do not turn the center area with the lathe running because there's no way to stop that disc perfectly in the center and you will go over the middle and you'll make two passes around that center so you'll make like a little moat if you if you go across the center with the lathe running now i'm looking at the edges this and some of them are rough so i'm going to sand them a bit but i want to leave some of that exterior patina on that just to keep some of the history here and there's some little sharp edges there i'm going to take some of those down as well now this is looking fantastic i can't believe those screw holes lined up like that i thought they were nail holes initially but they're screw holes but they lined up almost perfectly with the curve of this bowl all right so now i'm going to mount my jam chuck and we're going to reverse mount this and take the foot area off yeah i use a little piece of foam pad to pad the bowl against the jamb chuck and because we have the tail stock mark already in there we can just match that up which usually puts this in it's perfectly centered right off the bat sure enough we're looking really good there so i'm going to clean up the edge of this tenon and then i'm going to flatten the foot i want to make sure this sits on the table nice and flush without wobbling so we've got a nice clean foot area and then i'm going to push down and in to make an indentation i want to make sure that foot is the only thing that's touching that the outer ring is the only thing that touches the table top i don't want the middle to touch and possibly cause the bowl to wobble now i'm going to use a flat carbide scraper to shape the inside of that foot and really give it a nice definition what i'm looking for here is i want the curve of the bottom of the bowl to essentially just pass right through the base of the of the foot area as well so that it's almost as if that ring has been attached to the bowl just take your time here this is a very small detail worked and now i'm going to continue that curve this is my half inch bowl gouge again throughout this entire turning i've been using the half inch primarily i used the 5 8 inch a little bit at the beginning but the half inch swept back bowl gouge can do most of this work all right i'm going to sand this up while i've got on the lathe and i can use the rotation of the lathe to clean all this up now using the 3 8 inch spindle detail gouge i'm going to reduce that little nub from the tail stock just a bit here and take the sides down this is such a hard durable wood i can completely understand why this was the wood to be used when you were if you're a woodworker back in the early 1900s okay that's gonna just about do it that's deep enough that we won't have the little tip from the tail stock in there now i will sand that off using the disc sander you just need to be really cautious here not to let that disc rub into the the ring foot along the edge of the piece because it will take out sections of that and i also want to rotate it back and forth so that it's getting kind of an even surface there and then as i'm wiping it back and forth it helps blend that whole area together now i like to sign my bowls with a wood burner tool and you kind of need to adjust and adjust the temperature and decide what's going to work with each species of wood well i have my temperature up there pretty high of that first little bit and it was higher than i needed to this very dry wormy chestnut is does not need that much temperature to get a good mark on and just take your time and make a really nice signature after all you put all that work into making the bowl might as well take some time and sign it properly okay i'm going to use my my favorite wood bowl finish which is tried and true brand original finish which is made up of linseed oil and beeswax and when i say linseed oil in beeswax that's all it is there's nothing else in this there are no chemicals no dryers no metals nothing it's 100 food safe and everything they don't pay me to say this but i love this product and i just i think it's the best finish out there especially for bowls that will potentially have food contact i just i just love using this product now this this product needs to be burnished out what i do is apply it wait an hour and wipe off any excess you don't want any excess because it cures up and starts to um it starts to harden i wouldn't say harden but it cures over time but if you leave a thick area it will become gummy and obviously you don't want that essentially if you can see it on the surface of the wood you have enough on so that's why i'm rubbing this in as i go around and then within an hour i'm going to come back and wipe it down really good make sure there's no high spots or thick spots and then the next day i will take a 4-odd steel wool and just burnish the surface of this piece and it will be ready to go i can't believe those those those screw holes lined up like they did both on the front and back that's crazy and i want to make sure i get plenty of the finish in the sides of the bowl as well and there's that patina from the original board very fun piece what a great piece of american history the stories this this piece of wood could tell if only he could speak i want to make sure i get into those little screw holes as well how cool is that look at that green there's a couple of those wormholes there's that screw hole which i'm i'm so happy that's in there such a cool piece look at the profile that's the gentle curve that i was really wanted to achieve there and i love the fact that that center is off center i love the asymmetrical aspect of that look at those grains this thing weighs 11 ounces super lightweight as well it's about 300 grams ah very happy with this piece well there you have it a square wormy chestnut bowl i know some people might think of this as a platter but i'm calling it a bowl because we use all the techniques used to turn a bowl to make this piece and i got to tell you i'm thrilled with it there you never know what you're going to get when you're turning a wood bowl and you know the offset center i thought was going to be an issue but actually this being so square with that center being offset a little bit i think it makes it really interesting and wow i don't know how this happened but the angles of these screw holes happen to match the curve of the bowl itself which is crazy and i didn't plan that these just kind of happen to be there and i love that they're there because they're part of the history of this particular piece and wow i feel like we've unraveled a little bit of american history and i love history i love america and i love trees so this has been really exciting not only did we reveal some of these screw holes both on the front and the back but we also discovered that there are truly worms and wormy chestnuts so we know that now for a fact you know i don't know how to say this but there's just something just magical about being able to turn something like this i mean we're looking at a piece that this could have been harvested in the in the early 1900s it may have grown for several hundred years prior to that i don't know i mean we don't know the history of this so but we do know that this is a piece of american history and that part is truly exciting and i'm thrilled to have put this piece together and shared it with you guys today if you've liked this video please do me a huge favor and click that like button below the screen if you want to leave a comment for me i greatly appreciate that and for those of you that aren't subscribing yet be sure to subscribe because i've got more videos coming your way and you're not going to want to miss them so until next time guys i gotta tell you as always happy turning you

Channel: Turn A Wood Bowl

Views: 39,626

Rating: 4.9734221 out of 5

Keywords: Woodturning Square Bowl — American History — Wormy Chestnut Video, square bowl, woodturning square bowl, woodturning, Kent Weakley, Turn a wood bowl, wood bowl, woodturning bowl, wood turning tips, woodturning bowl video, bowl turning basics, woodturning videos, wood turning bowl, wood turning, bowl gouge, bowl turning, bowl turning techniques, wood bowls, turning wood bowls, wood bowl turning, natural edge, natural edge bowl, Woodturning a bowl

Id: 4s5c5bi9bwU

Length: 38min 15sec (2295 seconds)

Published: Sat Jan 23 2021