I bought a “luxury selection of exotic wood blanks” from ebay to try turning some bowls. Some of them worked!
Bowl 1 + Bowl 2
These were a success, although I think bowl 2 is better from a shape and finish point of view.
The groove I’ve cut into the bottom is how you hold it when you flip it round to turn the inside.
Bowl 3
I clumsily knocked the rim off this one while turning it, so I made it into a big coaster.
Bowl 4
This was an experiment using left over Larch strips from the studio build. Larch isn’t a hardwood so not the first choice for turning, but I thought I’d try it since I’ve got quite I bit I need to find a use for!
I glued multiple strips together with PVA wood glue, clamped, and let it dry for two days and turned it. It kinda went ok, except it was really hard to get a smooth surface. The rim kept breaking as I tried to turn it.
Then I screwed up several times (made the groove to hold it flipped wayyy too big), and tried to correct that.
Eventually I think I made the wood just too thin and it came to pieces as shown above; since its a softwood, there’s much less tolerance. I was wearing a mask + goggles and never stand in line with the piece I’m turning so although it was slightly scary, there wasn’t any injury. One point though: it wasn’t the PVA glue that broke – it was the weaker softwood itself. Definitely wanna try this technique with pieces of some more exotic wood.
Conclusion
But anyway, I’m really pleased with the successful bowls: I’ve still got a few blanks left to go. I’ve also ordered some cheap hardwood firewood logs to practice more turning on.
Next time though, a bit more planning: measure and mark a few things to ensure it fits into my lathe jaws properly.
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