A Cute Little Natural Edge Bowl from Wet Limb Wood

Hi, Alan Stratton from As Wood Turns dot com. While on location in Phoenix, Arizona, I attended a meeting of the Arizona Woodturners Association in which a fellow by the name of Ken Waller, I believe, made a presentation on several small projects including a natural edge bowl from a limb. It so happened that, shortly thereafter, I had to cut a limb from a tree near a house nearby. Carpe Diem! Let's make a bowl like his. This bowl will have the pith still included because it's the limb. It will be natural edge with the bark nice and solid on there. Now I'll leave the spigot on here for two or three weeks so that the bowl can dry. Then remount the bowl on the lathe using that center to true it up. Then I'll turn the base just a little bit more so that it will not rock on the table. Then it will be a very nice little bowl. Let's make it. I mounted my piece of juniper limb with a drive center on one side and a live center on the other trying to put the pith in the upper portion of the bowl. My limb is a little bit long for the width but I'd rather be a little long than a little short. Then starting at the bottom with a gouge, start forming the exterior of the bowl. Once the low edge of the bark shows the curvature of the bowl, I should have stopped and repositioned the live center to balance the two sides. But on this size of bowl, it does not matter too much. Easy does it here when working with the bark area. Not only am I cutting a lot of air but I have to flip my cutting direction around so that I cut from bark to solid work and avoid tearing the bark off. I'll also cut a tenon to use when mounting from the other direction. I'll sand and finish the exterior at this point. I could not sand by hand -- there just was not enough solid wood. So, I switched to light power sanding. I'll finish this small bowl with walnut oil. Time to flip the bowl over and hollow out the interior. This is definitely bowl gouge territory and time to make sure I position the tool correctly when starting a cut to avoid my gouge skating across the wood. The gouge has to be perpendicular to the spinning edge with the bevel exactly pointed in the direction I want to cut. I'll finish up the interior with a bowl scraper and a smaller round nose scraper. Finally, I tried to power sand the interior but my drill could not get into all the tight spots. I wound up doing a lot of hand sanding with the lathe turned off. Next time, I'll make the bowl less concave so I can get to more of the interior. Now for the base of the bowl. I had a hunk of MDF mounted to a faceplate from another bowl a while back. It was just a little too big so I turned it to fit the interior of this bowl. I'd prefer some rubber sanding pad but I don't have any here. So, I folded up several paper towels to provide a cushion for the interior. Then I'm removing the mounting tenon and refining the base. I'll leave the center spigot in place for several weeks while the bowl dries. I'm in Arizona for this project -- drying will not take long at all with this humidity. Now I have a cute little bowl -- what is it good for you ask? Maybe nothing at all -- except to be a cute little bowl with plenty of attractive end grain. It will be a conversation piece as non turners will wonder how I turned it. Plus, it did not take long to turn and the wood was free. Be sure to like this video and subscribe to my website and YouTube channel. Safe turning makes for good turning -- Please wear your face shield. Until next time, this is Alan Stratton from As Wood Turns dot com.