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Curious how you can make irregular shaped wood bowls like this one pictured. The wife asked me, and I was not sure if these were hand carved or some technique with a router or other power tool. Any thoughts on the steps to make something like this?
Attachment 504747
It was likely turned on a lathe.
Lathe turned bowl as Lee said. Perhaps a natural edge sanded and finished or a flat edge modified with carving and finishing would be my guess.
What Dave said. A typical natural edge turned bowl is saddle shaped, but in this case the horns appear to have been reshaped to be concave.
One way to make an irregular bowl is to turn green and let it warp while drying. I understand wood from branches will change shape more than trunk wood. A fellow I ran into years ago, made oblong bowls with a special face plate he made. The main frame stays centered but the part the wood is attached to, can be adjusted side to side and held fast with bolts. So he turns a bowl cavity, moves the face plate a a couple inches and cut out the second adjoining cavity. Then he backs up and takes out the humps between the cavities. it was a fairly simple looking set up. Then he had to hand carve the out side. (ugh)
here is also a special face plate with a geared sliding arrangement that permits turning ovals, like picture frames, odd oval boxes and bowls. Rather expensive and the only maker I am aware of is in Germany or Austria. They also require low rpms. Such apparatus was very common in the 1880's but now not so much. CNC routers can handle much of that work now.
Looks to me like a square bowl with the sharp corners rounded off. Lathe-turned but the blank was a square, corners are wider than the flat sides so as the bowl form tapers/curves towards the foot the diameter is lower at the flats of the square than at the corners of the square.
That bowl appears to be turned on a lathe with a conventional orientation: The base is on the bark side, and the hollow is on the pith side. That is what the growth rings suggest.
If that's the case - and judging by the symmetry of the bowl sides , this bowl did not warp and the rim undulation is not from the bark side or any movement.
That rim I bet was carved after the bowl was hollowed.
There are also 4 apexes and valleys in the rim, which is not really how a bowl naturally warps; you usually get 2 (the apexes would be where the pith is in this case).
I believe you can achieve edge effect with a jig on a bandsaw.
A basic adjustable circle jig is able to make the curvature shown on the piece in the OPQuote:
Originally Posted by Eugene Dixon