Hard Maple Salad Bowl, continued: working on the foot

 Hi,

Well, the side of the bowl came out very well. I've sanded it to 320 grit and it's very smooth:

Ok, the next step is the foot of the bowl.

There are several ways to attach a bowl blank to a lathe-I have a face plate that I could screw on to the foot but that would leave screw holes that I would have to deal with later so that leaves a bowl chuck:

This is a large Nova chuck that I use for very wide turns. It's heavy and very solid-it's 7 pounds of steel-and it fits snugly and firmly on the bowl foot and that's what I'm going to go with:

This will give me a safe attachment and dampen some of the turning vibration that occurs with spinning large heavy blocks of wood.

It's beginning to get cold and windy so I'm going to stop for the day. I'll be back tomorrow to begin hollowing out the bowl,

 

VW

 

 

Hard Maple Salad Bowl, continued-shaping the side

 Hi Everyone,

Well I just came in from examining the bowl on the lathe and there are several considerations here:

First-the volume of the bowl. I've wanted to preserve as much of the volume of the blank as possible. Salad bowls are typically large and deep so a salad can be tossed easily without the contents spilling out. This bowl will be a little under 21/2" deep which is not very deep. But the width is just around 13" at this point so that should mitigate the shallowness of the bowl. 

Second-Salad bowls are also typically very eye catching. If you go to Pinterest and search for wooden salad bowls you'll see some really gorgeous bowls in a variety of woods with all sorts of detail turned into the sides. This bowl is solid maple and has very little in the way of visible grain pattern. But the color is a soft white which is unusual for a salad bowl so I think it needs a little detail to catch the eye. As I don't like adding details to bowls that stand out from the surface (and which can break off if dropped) I'm going to add a band to the upper part of the bowl that is depressed from the surface.

I'm going down to the wood shop a little later on to work on the side. When I'm done I'll do another posting about the foot.

See you later,

VW