My first bowls

[Stephen Saar]

Here are my first bowls, I haven't completely finished them yet, I still need to do the final sanding and polishing but I only have up to 400 Grit paper right now. Going to the local wood turners meeting tomorrow and it's at a store so I should be able to pick up some more finishing supplies there. Want to try the sanding paper that goes up to 12000 grit to see how that works. The smaller bowl is walnut, and the larger one is white oak. Also I haven't done the bottoms since I need to buy some padding to mount them on before I get rid of the bottom.

Any critiques welcome.

Thanks

-Stephen

[Bernie Weishapl]

Looks like you have a good start on some nice looking bowls. Very seldom do I ever sand my bowls over 320 to 400 grit. A donut chuck will make doing the bottoms extremely easy and is cheap to make.

[alex carey]

I sand up to 3000 and im starting to think that's too high, I think im gonna start going to 2500 instead. Anything past that and there just isn't any difference that I can discern.

[Richard Madison]

Stephen, There is little if any reason to sand most bowls beyond 400 grit. An exception would be if you intend to buff and wax the bare wood with no additional finish material.

[Steve Schlumpf]

Stephen - I usually sand up to 320 - 400 max on bowls and hollow forms. Smaller spindle work sometimes gets sanded to 600 but rarely.

About the only suggestion would be to post larger photos so we can see a little more detail in your work. Max suggested size is 800 x 600 pixels with a file size no larger than 107 KB.

[jason lambert]

Nice job, better than my first attempt, in fact better than my first second and third attempt. Don't sand to 12000 you don't want to sand much beyond 200-400 if you do the finish may not penitrate and stick. you need a little ruffness in the wood. Now if you want to wet sand the finish that is another storie.

Most people sanding to 12000 are doing pens or acrylics and using it to sand there finish not the wood. 12000 is to smooth for wood. Unless you want to try go for it.

[Stephen Saar]

The main reason I was going to use the higher grit sandpaper was to see if it would do a polish like finish. I did a bowl turning class and there we used 2000 grit buffing wheel, so I wanted to see if the sand paper would give a similar finish. I like the look of wood when it doesn't have anything changing the color all that much so I liked the buffed look. Sounds like I should look in to something else to finish it. I might look at going and getting a buffing wheel adapter for my lathe and just buff it like we did in the class. Any other suggestions are welcome.

Thanks for the comments.

-Stephen

[Thomas Canfield]

Try using Tripoli on buffing wheel after the 400 grit. I do it now before applying a oil and polyurethane mix (4:1) finish, between coats (at least 3, 5 or 6 better), and after the final coat and buffing out for wax.