Project Tutorials

Turning a Simple Bowl

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Measures the thickness of the wood at the bottom to determine how much excess you have to remove. I tape a ruler on the end of my double-ended calipers to see the measurement.

I am going to reverse the bowl on to a jam chuck that fits in the interior of the bowl curve. Make the jam chuck from a wood that is softer than the turned bowl and round the edges of the jam chuck to help prevent marring the finished piece. This also works with natural edge bowl because it does not rely on the bowl rim for support.

I use a piece of self-stick sand paper with the grit side to the bowl surface. The fine grit will not damage the surface unless you get a big catch and spin the bowl on the jam chuck.

I still have the original center mark from the tailstock to center the bowl by when I reverse to turn the foot.

The bowl compressed on the jam chuck and centered on the tailstock end.

Turn the waste wood down to a smooth enough cylinder to mark where the bottom of the bowl needs to be.

Shape the bottom section of the bowl to blend in with the rest of the bowl profile.

I am going to turn a small detailed area for the actual foot. I am cutting against the grain with a small spindle gouge to define a transition from bowl side to foot.