Got Bowls? - Pics

[Busy Beaver Lumber]

Was busy a few weeks back making some wood bowl turning blanks for one of our customers in North Carolina. He takes these blanks, turns them on the lathe, puts a nice lacquer finish on them, then sells them at a local crafters guild he belongs to for about $70 a piece.

I cut all the pieces and Mrs. Beaver glues the rings together for me. Then I sand the rings using my conveyor belt fed Jet Drum Sander and glue the rings and base together using my bowl press. I really do enjoy making these and have sold over 350 of them.

Here is a picture of an order of 20 of them that I just shipped to him a week or so ago.



  

  

 

[adam82]

Very nice looking blanks. Do you use a band clamp to glue them together or is there some other trick

[Busy Beaver Lumber]

Adam82

Thanks for the compliment. Pretty much a bargain at $19.95 we sell them for. Lots of repeat customers, and here lately some pretty big single orders. This order of 20 at once was out largest to date. Have had lots of customers buy 5, because that is what i can ship in a USPS game shaped flat rate box for about $16.

I do use band clamps on larger size rings greater than 8 inches or so in diameter. What I find works just as well on the smaller rings are good quality thick rubber bands. I often buy them at hobby shops. They are used to attach the wing to the fuselage on RC planes. They are very strong and durable. I think they were arco brand and are about 3/8" tall and about 3 inches oval shape before you stretch them. Glue will not stick to them and you can use them time and time again without failure.

One of the keys is to make sure you have your miter saw cutting exactly square and exactly at the angle you set it to, otherwise you will get a miss-match in your final circle. If you need more help let me know. If you tell me what size ring you want and how many segments in each ring, i cna tell you what angle to set saw to and how long to make each segment.

[Peter Drouin]

Do you have a pic of a turned bowl ?

[jamesamd]

You are busy,Nice ;)

Jim

[Busy Beaver Lumber]

Here are pics of a few bowls i have turned



  

 

[Peter Drouin]

Nice, thanks for the pics

[coxy]

those bowls are vary nice  thanks for the pic guys keep up the good work 8) 8)

[Leigh Family Farm]

Wow, these look great. And another idea of Busy Beaver's goes into my "Dream Shop" notebook. It looks like a lot of the wood pieces are no bigger than 5" wide, which means that cut-offs from high grade wood projects could be made into great bowls or bowl blanks. Would this work, BBL?

P.S. What don't you do in your shop?  ;)

[Magicman]

BB is a "Bowl Whisperer".   

[21incher]

Great bowls. You do the hard part so anyone can make a custom bowl. I bet you could sell thousands of them on ebay.

[CHARLIE]

That's a lot of gluing!  You do a fine job turning those bowls. They are real pretty and I like the shape.

[samandothers]

Bowlutiful!  Really bowls me over!   ;D

Great work.

[Busy Beaver Lumber]

Wow, these look great. And another idea of Busy Beaver's goes into my "Dream Shop" notebook. It looks like a lot of the wood pieces are no bigger than 5" wide, which means that cut-offs from high grade wood projects could be made into great bowls or bowl blanks. Would this work, BBL?

P.S. What don't you do in your shop?  ;)

Depending on the ring diameter you want, most pieces are usually less than two inches in length.Scarp wood works fine for making these.

[Busy Beaver Lumber]

Great bowls. You do the hard part so anyone can make a custom bowl. I bet you could sell thousands of them on ebay.

Funny you should mention selling them on ebay....because we do that. Have not sold a thousand yet, but at first we used letters and number combination to identify each bowl then switched to numbers. I just listed number 268 yesterday and know we sold about 100 before we went to just numbers.... so i would say we sold at least 368, and then there have been about 200 repeat sales where they came back to us directly

[Mooseherder]

I had cut down a Sapodilla tree at my daughter's place about a year ago because it was making nothing but a mess on their deck and yard.
The tree had a couple of areas that were burl like.  I had left one of the pieces outside on a pile of wood and one in the garage.  The one outside was full of pharaoh ants so it went into the fire pit.  The one in the garage is pictured here.  It was a very hard wood. My bowl gouges weren't cutting it even after sharpening.  I made myself a cutter from an old steel dowel on the bench grinder.  It has a walnut oil finish with 400 grit on it.



 

[Busy Beaver Lumber]

Very nice bowl there Moosehearder. Funny how some of the worst wood to turn makes some of the nicest looking bowls. I can see that was a tough turn, especially around the base. Good thing you had the beer to keep the operator properly lubricated and to avoid overheating.  ;D

Hickory is a bear to turn, especially if it dry, but it produces some very nice looking bowls. I love the look of orange osage in a bowl, but it just does not sand out well and is also a challenge to turn.

Pardon my ignorance, but what is a pharaoh ant? Are they similar to the fire ants i saw and had an unfortunate encounter with in Florida. Boy is their bite painful for such a little critter.

[Mooseherder]

I call them pharaoh ants or ghost ants because they are so tiny and you can barely see them.  I'm not sure if that is the proper name for them.  They don't bite that I can remember.  Fire Ants need to be annihilated as they serve no useful purpose in this world other than to cause severe pain.

[Lud]

Hate to disagree with you, BBL, but osage orange turns fine with a Thompson 5/8" bowl gouge sharped on a Wolverine jig.  It is a hard wood.  It sanded fine with my usual progression out to 600, then mineral oil and beeswax.



 

Turned this batch in the Fall.  Made a bit!

[Mooseherder]

Not a bowl but something I saw a picture of and have been wanting to turn one for a while now.
This is from a branch from the Australian Pine.  The natural color of this very hard wood looks like it is stained.  This thing beat me up for a couple minutes until I knocked the out of round off. :D   I hand squared it off on my radial arm saw before turning. The bottom and top end grains are like running your hand on glass.  It weighs at least 10 pounds now.  The picture I saw of one had some brown twine rope around the neck of the bottle so I'm going to try that. I sanded with 60, then 100, then 220 and finished with 400 and walnut oil.
Don't hate me cause my grass is green eh. ;D



  

 

[POSTON WIDEHEAD]

The glass bowl setting behind the wooden bottle almost fooled me. It looks like its part of the bottle.

[Busy Beaver Lumber]

Lud

When I turn orange osage, a lot of times i get white voids or lines in it that i just cant seam to turn out or sand out. Do you encounter that? Is it just the nature of the wood and am I trying to defy nature by eliminating it?  That is what difficulties I have with it.

[Lud]

Osage is the most rot resistant wood there is so it's not that.  White areas?  Is that deep within the wood or maybe near the surface  as I'm thinking if near the surface it might be something from the cambium, i.e. getting out towards the bark.  I find the internal wood very stable tho you can hit some bark inclusions, etc.

As you can see in the pic, the stuff turned fine.  It's too hard to mark and almost rings when turned thin.  Gotta sharp the tools often too.  Hope your next osage works like mine did. ;D