Boat Bowl

[Mike Henderson]

Some time back, I posted a "Want To Buy" in the Classified looking for a Bowl Adze. The reason is that a friend of mine is doing some major renovations on his house and he gave me a piece of wooden beam about three feet long that was removed from his house during the renovation. It's construction lumber, probably fir, and it had a lot of nails in it. Once I got the nails out, I decided to use it to make a boat bowl - just because I thought it would be an interesting project.

I did get a bowl adze but it was slow work on seasoned lumber so I resorted to drilling out most of the waste in the bowl with a Forstner bit and working the rest with carving gouges (I think the adze works best on green wood).

On the outside, I used a portable power planer to rough shape the sides and then carving gouges to do more shaping. Then I sanded with very coarse sandpaper and actually did some minor shaping with the sanding.

Here's how it came out. I had to cut about two inches out of the center of the beam because of knots, and then glue the two pieces back together. You can see a lot of nail holes in the wood.

It's certainly not any award winning piece but it was interesting to work on. It's about 19 inches long, 10 inches wide and 3 1/2 inches high.

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[Phil Mueller]

Very nice, Mike. Proves even construction lumber has a nice look when done well. I actually like the nail holes...gives it character.

[Andrew Hughes]

It’s pretty cool Mike.
I also like the look of old fir.
Theres a church near me that’s getting tomorrow I will see if they will set aside any large beams.
Got my fingers crossed

[Jim Becker]

Adz a pretty nice bowl, Mike! Seriously...nice work.

[Howard Pollack]

Very graceful and an imaginative use for wood that might otherwise become fire-wood. -Howard

[julian abram]

Very nice, has character and a story. Confession, I had to Google "Bowl Adze", didn't know what it was.