Old dry bowls

[Roger Davis TN]

I was looking through my old ruff cut bowls and many of them look like ovals. If I turned them one side would disappear. What do you do with them? Are they firewood? Roger

[Alex Zeller]

I just sand them smooth and leave them that shape. When I was first making blanks I would just leave them rough but now that I've had a few that surprised me just how much they changed I try to get them close to finished. I just make the rim and the base flat and leave the walls thick.

[Dale Bonertz]

How deep are they Roger? You can cut the rim down a little bit and the further you go down the less oval they become since most of the movement is at the rim. Then finish turn them.

[Wes Ramsey]

Couple other options:

- finish turn it as high as you can and leave the oval rim
- cut the bowl in half and make an eccentric clamshell piece
- rip the bowl at the narrowest section and join it back together. If you cut a strip out of the middle just wide enough you may be able to turn it completely round. Maybe even laminate a contrasting wood between the halves.
- if there's otherwise no way to make the bowl visually appealing you can slice sections off the rim and use them for drawer pulls and finish the base as a small platter.

[Leo Van Der Loo]

I was looking through my old ruff cut bowls and many of them look like ovals. If I turned them one side would disappear. What do you do with them? Are they firewood? Roger

If you left the walls 10% when rough turned (As is always suggested) you should have enough wood to finish turn them (90% of the time or better).

The problem often is to accurately center the bowl for returning, as sometimes the shape will not deform evenly, I use my Mega Jumbo jaws for that very often, measuring as I go and twisting the bottom to get it as good as it can be, use your tailstock if needed and then true up the recess (or tenon) reverse the bowl and again measure and rotate and start turning carefully, look again and improve if you can or needs to be.

I have done a lot of turnings and I twice turn as a norm, from soaking wet and return years later, I have so many bowls sitting for better than 10 years, some longer than 20.

wet Walnut.jpg rough turned Cherry.jpg

Here are most of my rough turned bowls that I brought along to my new place (1000+)
Dry roughouts.jpg

With a 10% roughed out wall thickness and an evenly drying, I have enough wood to make even some handles on the bowl, like here where I have colored where the handles are going to be, excess sawn away and the finished one shown alongside.
Warped.jpg Warped nomore.jpg

Here are a few more of the ones I’ve made.
Black Cherry.jpg Norway Maple.jpg Mulberry.jpg

Don’t give up yet, see what you can get out of it, might surprise yourself that there is still enough wood to return it.

[Thomas Canfield]

Leo said it well. I would only add that leaving a "dimple" or center point in tenon allows jamming against the open jaws of chuck to drive an oval shape rough out to return the tenon and some adjacent area of bottom to then mount in the chuck. Some species such as fruit woods will expand to give problems with the 10% and I had some Cherry Laurel that had to be shortened to keep the inside from exceeding the outside at the original rim.

[Robert Hayward]

Here are most of my rough turned bowls that I brought along to my new place (1000+)

Leo, I am always impressed and at the same time envious of your skill and ability to turn wooded bowls. Excellent work !

However, a thousand roughs are just "most" of your roughs ??? You might want to check out this link.

You might run into me there.

[Leo Van Der Loo]

Leo, I am always impressed and at the same time envious of your skill and ability to turn wooded bowls. Excellent work !

However, a thousand roughs are just "most" of your roughs ??? You might want to check out this link.

You might run into me there.

Ha, not me

[Roger Davis TN]

Thank you all. Leo, what a number of bowls. Do plan to sell them? I want to try to sell some this spring. I have no clue what to sell them for but have looked at some production bowl company's prices. They are pricey. Leo you are rich. Thanks for the advice all, Roger.