Spiral Bowl

[Jim Young]

The woodworking channel yesterday had a segment where the guy took a 8/4 piece of wood, drew a spiral on it and cut the spiral with his bandsaw at 4deg. Then he glued the piece together while he pushed the center through. This made a roughly shaped bowl in which all he had to de was cut the corners down. Has anyone tried to do this? It looks like an easy way to get a sizable bowl without using large chinks of wood. I just wonder how solid the glued surface ends up, would there be any voids in the bowl from lack of glue.

[Lee DeRaud]

Haven't seen that one exactly, but there was very something similar here awhile back:
http://www.sawmillcreek.org/showthread.php?t=37212

Although now I'm dimly remembering Scott Phillips doing that on his show, but he didn't even bother turning it, just left it as a stepped basket.

[Jim Young]

Ya, that's exactly it. Scott Phillips is the one on the show. I was just surprised how easy it was to make. He used mahogany(SP?).

[Dale Overman]

Jim, I have not done much of this but a friend cut concentric circles from a single board at angles and glued them up as you were saying and I turned some bowls from it and it worked great. He used walnut and the difference in sapwood and heartwood made some real pretty bowls. He used an angle derived by drawing a diagonal of the crosssection of the circles. If the board was 1 inch thick and the circles were 1 inch wide, the angle would be a 45 degree angle I think. The glue held up well. I have several bowls that I use for bread baskets. I think the larger angle gives you more flat surface to glue on. Anyway I know it works. After he drew the circles he cut it in half so he could cut the circles on a bandsaw. So he actually glued up half circles, staggering the cvuts.