Making bowls with laser

[Ernie Balch]

I just got a book on making wooden bowls with a scroll saw. The method saves a lot of wood compared to a lathe approach, you just cut rings of wood on an angle and stack them up.

I decided to take some of the beautiful maple and walnut wood I bought from George Perzel and laser cut rings.
Since they were not cut on angles I had to do lots of sanding.

Here is my first bowl in 2 views:
http://i1140.photobucket.com/albums/n564/clancy60/IMG_1969.jpg
http://i1140.photobucket.com/albums/n564/clancy60/IMG_1968.jpg

[john banks]

Looks great! Does the inside remain stepped because it isn't sanded?

Is the pattern on each sheet of wood a set of concentric circles? Sounds like a great way to conserve materials.

Is each ring glued to the next?

[Ernie Balch]

I didn't sand the inside.

The design is nothing more than two sets of concentric circles of maple and another two sets of walnut rings. The all white portion was 2 sets of birch ply concentric circles glued up. I did that first as a proof of concept, then cut pairs of same size maple and walnut rings and glued them together this makes each layer a little over 1/4 inch thick so it made a steeper bowl design. Each of the maple-Walnut ring pairs was a quarter inch larger diameter than the previous pair of rings so I have 1/8 inch overlap to glue up with.

ernie

[Steve Clarkson]

Very nice Ernie......I've never been able to get plywood look that nice!

[Lee DeRaud]

There's no rule that the stripes have to be solid either. I did a bunch of these about 4-5 years ago: http://www.sawmillcreek.org/showthread.php?58025 (http://www.sawmillcreek.org/showthread.php?58025-Spiral-Bowls-part-1&highlight=spiral+bowl) ...post #20 shows the cut-and-glue-up process. It's a lot easier to use a lathe to smooth them down though. There are several variations, as you get different effects depending on what the flat stock looks like before you cut it into rings:
http://www.sawmillcreek.org/showthread.php?58027
(http://www.sawmillcreek.org/showthread.php?58027)http://www.sawmillcreek.org/showthread.php?58377
http://www.sawmillcreek.org/showthread.php?63874

[Mike Null]

Very nice Lee. I like the second one especially.

[Ernie Balch]

How do you chuck it up in a lathe? I was afraid that it would fly apart if I mounted it from one end and tried to scrape the inside smooth.

ernie

[Lee DeRaud]

How do you chuck it up in a lathe? I was afraid that it would fly apart if I mounted it from one end and tried to scrape the inside smooth.Standard bowl-turning stuff: just glue a disk of 1/4" MDF to the bottom end. Sharp tools are a must. When you're (almost) done, you've got to turn off the smaller disk and smooth the bottom, but that's the same as for any other bowl.

And yes, I still blow up about one in four during the turning process, but my turning chops are best described as "an overdose of imagination locked in mortal combat against a near-total lack of skill and technique".

[Riki Potter]

I've been making bowls for a little while now using a similar idea, although mine use a single set of concentric circles or ovals and I designed them to be stepped. Their more of a decorative bowl than a useful bowl but people certainly seem to love them.

231226

[Paul Dietz]

I was wondering how to do angled cuts on the laser. The rings are hard to do because the angle is constantly changing. But you can do angled straight cuts just by fixturing the material at an angle. My point here is that you can do triangular, square or any other straighted sided bowl, without all the sanding...

Just a thought...

[Jiten Patel]

Love this guys, Ernie, love the concept, and Riki, that bowl looks really nice.

[Lee DeRaud]

...and I designed them to be stepped.But you miss out on the joy and excitement of them explosively disassembling themselves all over the garage...:p:cool:

Very nice, BTW.

[Lee DeRaud]

I was wondering how to do angled cuts on the laser. The rings are hard to do because the angle is constantly changing. But you can do angled straight cuts just by fixturing the material at an angle. My point here is that you can do triangular, square or any other straighted sided bowl, without all the sanding...

Just a thought...So now think about the mitered joint at each corner of each layer: there's a reason I don't do traditional segmented turnings.

[john banks]

The versions with more work don't look so conspicuously laser cut which might be a good thing. How much time is in them?

[Lee DeRaud]

The versions with more work don't look so conspicuously laser cut which might be a good thing. How much time is in them?The lathe time (which is what removes the "laserness") is a tiny fraction of the total. Most of the effort is up front: laminating up the stock for whatever pattern I'm going for and then resawing and smoothing the thin pieces that actually go into the laser. Once I've got laser-ready thin stock, it's maybe 15 minutes to cut, an hour to glue up, 30 minutes to turn and finish.

Note that the glue-up of the final form would go a lot faster if I knew I wasn't going to stick it on the lathe...

[Paul Dietz]

So now think about the mitered joint at each corner of each layer: there's a reason I don't do traditional segmented turnings.

Yes, you end up with a small amount of over cut on the inside corners. External ones are fine...

[Craig Matheny]

Not to high-jack the thread but it is a bowel question...
Does any one have or have done one of the bowels that lay flat and then you lift the handle and instant bowel / basket? These are normally done on a scroll saw I think but laser should be able to do it.

[Joe Hillmann]

Not to high-jack the thread but it is a bowel question...
Does any one have or have done one of the bowels that lay flat and then you lift the handle and instant bowel / basket? These are normally done on a scroll saw I think but laser should be able to do it.

Like this? I want to include a living hinge where it folds. To create them in corel you just make a concentric spiral and set your number of rings to whatever you want the width of the rings to be times the radius and then put a circle around that for the rim. This one is about 8 inches across and took about 5 minutes to cut.
231261

It broke when I tried to bend the handle with heat so I just glued to see how it would turn out. With a bit of thought put into it they could turn out pretty well

[Glen Monaghan]

Not to high-jack the thread but it is a bowel question...
Does any one have or have done one of the bowels that lay flat

Based on the nearly epidemic case of obesity these days, I'd venture to say it's getting harder and harder to find someone with bowels that don't bulge... 8^o

[Craig Matheny]

bowls nice.... spell check only works if you spell it wrong

[Lee DeRaud]

Does any one have or have done one of the bowls that lay flat and then you lift the handle and instant bowl / basket? These are normally done on a scroll saw I think but laser should be able to do it.Bandsaw, actually: it was Scott Phillips on the 'American Woodworker' show. (Discussed here http://www.sawmillcreek.org/showthread.php?41716)
To make it work, you have to make the cut at an angle (~4 degrees in this case) so the rings wedge as it expands vertically, so it's not a laser-friendly process.