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(jazzy music)
David:Hi, my name is David Marks.
We're here in northern California,
sunny California,
where I've got my woodworking school.
We teach classes on a variety
of woodworking subjects,
as well as bowl turning.
For today, I'd like to show you
how to turn a bowl.
I'm gonna grab this beautiful old piece
of olive wood here.
This is a really fine piece of European olive wood.
It's got some bark inclusions,
but I'll show you what I'm gonna do
to cut out around those defects,
and hopefully get a nice small bowl
or sort of a hollow form out of this piece of olive wood.
I'm using a compass to draw a six-inch
diameter circle on the olive wood.
The bandsaw is the most efficient tool
for trimming the blank to size.
Make sure you use a push stick
to keep your fingers away from the blade.
Well, I've discovered more cracks inside the wood,
but I'll see if I can remove it on the lathe.
I'm lining up the point of the live center
with the center mark left by the compass.
Now, I'm lining up the spur drive on the other side.
Sharpening begins with using a diamond wheel dresser
to flatten the 80-grit wheel.
I like using a felt-tip black marker
to draw some lines on the bevel.
That way you'll know exactly what metal
you've removed when you start to sharpen.
I recommend using Stu Batty's
platform sharpening technique.
Draw lines on the platform at 40 degrees
using a protractor.
Then set the angle of the platform
to grind a 40-degree angle on the bevel,
or nose of the gouge.
Then grind the wing straight and round the nose.
I'm using a push cut to rough out the stock.
It turns out that that bark inclusion was pretty deep,
as well as these cracks.
I could fill it with black epoxy but for now,
let's move on to a different piece of wood.
I found a really nice piece of maple burl
that we can use instead.
By offsetting the blank,
I can better balance the natural edge on the top.
This piece of maple burl is about six years old,
and has gotten pretty dry and hard.
I have the thumb of my left hand
across the flute of my half-inch bowl gouge,
applying pressure down to the tool rest,
as my right hand pushes the gouge
towards the head stock.
You can also use the gouge on its side,
and scrape with the wings.
This is a square carbide cutter
from the Easy Wood Tool Company.
This round carbide cutter from Easy Wood Tools
is yet another way to shape a bowl.
Here I'm using a 3/8 inch bowl gouge
to shape a tenon.
The point tool is excellent for creating a
crisp dovetail on the tenon.
It's critical to have a flat shouldering contact
with the top of the jaws.
Make sure there are no gaps,
and that you can't fit a piece of paper
between the jaws and the shoulder.
The tail stock can help apply pressure
as you're tightening up the jaws.
I think a raised band would be a nice detail
for this bowl,
so I'm using some chalk to lay it out.
It needs to be placed just below
the lowest section of the natural edge.
For natural-edge bowls,
always cut from the outside in,
so as not to damage the edge.
The point tool is great for defining bands and beads.
Here, I begin with the flute open,
maintaining bevel contact,
and close the flute as I meet the band.
I'm using a parting tool to define
the bottom of the bowl.
I've also left some wood over the jaws to protect them.
With the gouge on its side,
you can safely use the wings
to shape and blend the curves.
Another feature of the point tool is
that you can use all three edges
at a 45-degree angle for shear scraping.
Final smoothing of the surface is done with sandpaper.
This is some foam-backed 120-grit.
Here's a technique that I use
for blending curves and making furniture.
I'm attaching some 120-grit sandpaper
with double-stick tape
to a piece of 1/8 inch thick bending plywood.
The plywood conforms to the curve
without rounding over the low spots.
A foam pad would round over the natural edges.
I'm using a drill to remove the center.
Yeah, I'm lookin' kinda bouncy here.
The Easy Wood tool -
this is the CIO round carbide cutter,
makes short work out of removing the bulk of the wood.
You can move the tool left to right,
or right to left.
The main thing is to keep it flat on the tool rest
with the cutting edge at center.
After removing some of the bulk from the center,
I'm using a sharp 3/8 inch bowl gouge
for my finishing cuts near the natural edge.
The nose of the gouge slices the wood
as the wings peel,
producing a very clean surface.
Always divide your attention,
placing some awareness of how close your hands are
to that very sharp spinning natural edge.
Don't forget to measure for the bottom of the bowl.
Back to the carbide cutter to remove the rest of the wood.
Scrapers are a much easier way to shape a curve,
although on a dry piece of maple burl,
which has end grain going in all directions,
you can end up with a lot of torn fiber.
Rotating the cutter to a fresh sharp edge
is a good method for cleaning up the surface.
At this stage, take slow light passes.
Well, looks like my knuckle got
a little too close to the edge.
I have found that the best way to blend the
inside curves of a bowl is to attach some sandpaper
to a very thin piece of wood with double-stick tape,
and use a padded stick to reach inside
and press it down until it conforms to those curves.
Then, move it back and forth to sand out those ridges
and blend it to a nice uniform curve.
At this point, I'm not finished,
but I've got some more sanding to do.
Essentially, I'm kinda out of time.
My friend Mark has gotta catch a plane,
so I just wanna give you a general idea
of how this thing would go together,
and how we would finish off the bottom.
Essentially, the procedure that I would follow is
to finish sanding the inside.
I generally like to sand the entire piece at 320,
and then from there, go to a hand-rubbed oil finish,
essentially a thinned-down wiping varnish.
I tend to do my finishes off the lathe.
In terms of turning the bottom,
typically what I like to do is
to reverse mount it so I can get access
to the bottom and turn it.
One of the things that I would normally do
is to make a jam chuck,
especially with a piece like this
because of that natural edge.
You can see that this natural edge
would make it difficult to reverse mount it.
But, because I put this band on here,
what I could do is I could make a jam chuck similar to this
and there'd be a face plate on this side.
What I would do is I'd turn a block of wood
that would be appropriate for this piece,
and essentially this band would reference
up against that edge.
It'd fit inside this jam chuck.
This edge would fit up against this edge,
and then I could bring up the tail stock -
bring up the tail stock.
I still have my center, which is important.
That way I can get back on to that access point,
so I'd be centered.
I could come back in here and I could turn the bottom.
I think we've got a really nice form there.
I'm quite happy with the way that turned out,
and by the time this is sanded to 320 and oiled,
it's gonna be a beautiful piece.
At this point, I'd like to show you
what the bottom of some of my turn pieces look like,
because it's really important
to finish them off at the bottom.
So, let's head over to the workbench
and I'll show you what some of those look like.
Here's the piece that we just turned,
and what I want to do is to
round the bottom a bit more,
and create a nice detail on the bottom.
In order to do that, you have to reverse turn it.
The advantages are that you really end up
with some nice shapes here.
Actually, here's a hollow vessel
that's still a work in progress.
This is out of the same wood, some maple burl.
With this one, I bleached it
because I wanted to lightly color it a bit.
You can see on the bottom
that I've reverse mounted it and turned it,
and you can get some really fine details in there.
It just adds to the overall feel of the piece.
Here's another one that I've turned.
This is one that I've done
with my gilded patination finishes,
silver leaf with patinas on it.
Again, I like to put a little groove in there.
Also, I'm concerned about the shape
because I want that rounded form
to sort of round down into that horizontal plane,
and have that foot kind of disappear.
This is an older piece here.
This is some quilted maple.
With this one, it's got sort of an ogee curve
on the bottom shape
and then this inset ring here.
and just some more details in the center.
It, again, adds to the piece.
I like this foot.
I slightly cut it in a little bit,
so that when it sits on the table, it's sitting flat.
It's got a good solid foundation there.
Here's one that I just finished out of koa.
Koa's a beautiful wood - love koa.
It has a lot of warmth
and a wonderful figure to it,
a little bit of black palm ingrain
for some details on this band,
and then again my silver leaf and patina finish
on the bottom.
You can see that I did the detail here.
I made a foot so it has a flat spot to rest on,
but it's relieved in the center.
That way, it's always resting on that outer rim.
When it sits on a horizontal surface,
you can see that the curves seem to flow together.
I don't want it to end abruptly
into a horizontal plane.
This last one I'll show you is kinda tricky.
This is a two-piece construction
with [curlicue] on the top,
and then I'm using poplar on the bottom
as the canvas for my patina finishes.
This one I've done with copper leaf,
and I developed a technique
for doing these gold leaves on here.
Then, on the bottom of this, again,
it's rounding down so it disappears
into that horizontal plane,
and a couple of grooves on the bottom there.
That's pretty much it.
Yeah, I'm quite happy with the form.
I think by the time I've finished off the bottom,
all this tenon stock will be cut away,
and it'll be sort of rounding into the table,
and kinda lookin' like this.
Once again, my name is David Marks.
I've got a school here in Santa Rosa,
in northern California, and check out our website.
We've got a lot of classes,
classes on marquetry, classes on inlay.
We have a five-day hands-on class on finishing,
a five-day hands-on class on bowl turning,
as well as learning how to do hollow vessels
with these patina finishes.
Check out my website.
It's djmarks dot com.
Thanks for watching and hope to see you soon.
(jazzy music)