6/22/2015 Breakfast Bowls - Wedding GiftMy youngest sister just got married to her husband a couple of weeks ago so I figure I can now post about their wedding gift that I made for them. I turned a set of 4 maple breakfast bowls! I laminated two 8/4 maple slabs together to make up my bowl blanks and cut them roundish on the bandsaw to make them easier to carve round on the lathe. I mounted a face plate on each one so I could rough turn the shape of each bowl bottom. I used a forstner bit to create a mortise deep enough to receive my lathe chuck. I ended up sanding the bottom to test out how high a grit I could get to and make a super smooth finish.. After I turned the bottoms of all the bowls and sanded them to around 320 grit then took the faceplate off to then carve out the inside of the bowl. I used a carbide insert carving tool to do the majority of the work on these which was an awesome experience until I ole a check of metal imbedded in one of my bowls.. You'll notice I had six bowls there.. They were made in case I made a mistake which we'll get too shortly. More sanding.. To make the bowls a reasonable size, I had to remove about half an inche off the top of the bowl once I turned them around and mounted them on the lathe chuck. I used a fine parting tool to work my way close to the center then used a fine saw to cut the remainder off.. Then I hit a chunk of metal while hollowing out the first bowl. This was super deflating and the first real lathe event I've ever had while turning! I was hoping it was a bullet or something cool but it turned out to be a screw that was hidden in the wood that wasn't seen for some reason. Good thing I'll be checking my wood with a metal detector for future projects! Look at the chunk of carbide that was taken out of my cutter! I packed up for the night.. Then went back to work with a new carbide blade. So, in hollowing out these bowls without the proper tool rest, I had a couple of mishaps while carving. I caught an edge on the carbide cutter and on two of the bowls, the mortises weren't deep enough in the bottoms and I had two come off while carving. Now that is nerve wracking and I learned to take a break for awhile and come back to the project. So I got a set of four complete and sanded to around 800 grit which was really smooth to touch. Then I applied three coats of watco butcher block oil to protect the maple. After letting them cure for three days, they were food safe and ready for delivery! This was a long post. Thanks for sticking through it with me! I have a fair bit of really cool project work coming down the pipe. Thanks for checking out my work! Comments are closed.
|
AuthorWelcome to WoodProjectsbyBagel! Archives
March 2018
|