Scrap Wood Project 2-The Covered Yarn Bowl or Saving Your Yarn from Marauding Cats-Finish Photos

Hi Everyone & Happy Halloween!

Well it's October 31 and I'm protecting myself from ghosts, ghouls, and zombies-I have my dinosaur socks on which repel all those creatures:

And if all else fails, I'll throw wood chips at them. Another good reason not to sweep out the shop:

Ok, back to the shop and the yarn bowl...

When last we met, I had assembled a turning blank for the lid out of scrap pine and this is the basic blank. I wanted a heavy lid that would not pop off when yarn was being pulled through it and also one that had a substantial knob and this is what I'm aiming for:

So I mounted it on the lath and turned the knob portion round:

And put the large bowl jaws on my Nova chuck:

And turned a thick, almost 3/4" thick lip on the underside of the lid. As the sides of the bowl slope in, I beveled the lip carefully to fit the inside of the bowl:

And voila! It fits perfectly. I sanded it well and then flipped it over and placed it back on the lathe to turn the knob, the lid, and to sand and finish it:

Normally I would have trued up the edge by now but as there is little wood to do that with, I'm going to wait until I'm very nearly done turning to do that. I don't want to cut away too much wood as doing so would make the lid fall into the bowl instead of sitting on top of the rim:

So I placed the blank between centers and began turning. Pine is of course a soft wood and it requires really sharp tools to cut it without tearing it up. I sharpened my tools before I began but even with that, the wood tore quite a bit:

I wanted a large knob that is easy to grab on to so I undercut the knob portion of the blank so my fingers will fit underneath it and cut the knob down and rounded it off:

Here is the blank before sanding. You can see some torn grain at the edge of the lid:

And here it is after sanding. Sand paper fixes many sins in wood turning!

I sanded the lid to 400 grit and thin polished it with pine shavings and it came out really nice. Now for the next step-creating an opening on the lid for yarn to pass through. 

Here we have several ways of accomplishing that-I could drill a hole right through the lid and that can serve as an exit for the yarn. Or I could drill a hole and then cut a slot so that yarn can pass through the lid and into the hole. Or I could drill a small section of the rim away with a large forstner bit and keep the lid intact and that's what I did. Here you see the lid on the drill press ready to be drilled with a 2" bit:

I drilled it and stopped short of drilling all the way through accidently. Since this is pine, I took one of my carving knives and whittled away that remaining section of the rim, sanded the edge of the hole smooth and it's finished:

Here it is:

This is the lid on the bowl. You can see there is enough room for yarn to pass through without it shredding:

Here it is on top of the bowl with some knitting needles poking out of the lid:

And you can see that Rhubarb is studying this trying to figure out how to get at the yarn. He'll never get inside! I have triumphed!!

Bwahahah!!!

Here is the finished bowl and lid:

It just needs several coats of lacquer and it's done.

This makes producing yarn bowls much easier and it makes using a variety of different kinds of bowls and containers possible.
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Ok, I have another pet urn to make and then it's time to stop and clean out the shop and do some maintenance on the shop tools. After that I have a very special project that I'll share with you.

Have a terrific Halloween!
VW