A Wooden Bowl

The pictures below show some of the steps I use to make a wooden bowl on my lathe. This particular bowl is made of mahogany and aspen wood and is approximately 7" in diameter and 4" tall.

Many times this is how I start a woodworking project, by drawing it in AutoCAD on my computer.

This bowl consists of (4) pieces of 3/4" thick mahogany and (1) 3/4" thick piece of aspen, glued and clamped.


Here, the glued up mahogany and aspen are mounted on my Turncrafter lathe. Notice that on the headstock side (left) is a piece of spruce which is glued to the last piece of mahogany. This piece of wood is sacrificial and will be cut away from the final bowl. It is there so that I have a place to screw the steel faceplate to so as to keep the screws from damaging the mahogany.

The wood was glued up as 7-1/4" square pieces and then after the glue dried I found the center and then drew a circle on the end with a compass. Then I cut the corners off on my Palmgren band saw.


The wood has been rounded on the lathe and is ready for the outside to be roughed into shape.


In this picture the outside of the bowl has been roughed into shape and I've started hollowing out the interior. Look at the amount of wood shavings that are produced.


The bowl shaping is complete and now I will move on to the extensive amount of sanding that is necessary.


The bowl has been sanded and this shot shows the side profile.


You can see the interior in this picture.


I use MicroMesh in the final sanding stage.


I screw clamped a 12" steel pipe to the toolrest so that I could reach further into the interior of the bowl with the carving tools.


Some of my lathe carving tools, most were purchased from PennState Industries.