After the great knowledge gain of turning the first bowl, i was keen to try again. i had watched some more youtube video’s, and knew what i had done wrong the first time.

so off i went, but this time i thought, i should turn a smaller piece, so i can practice my turning tool handling skills.

i also found it much easier to start with a round as piece as possible, and since i have a short bandsaw, and was turning a small piece, this worked out perfectly.

so, here are the cut pieces of cherry
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got one of them on the lathe, and formed the outer wall
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the inside turned out
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Pile of shavings. i was trying to take a video, but my battery died. also, I’ve applied walnut oil at this stage
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this is one way to turn the bottom of the piece after you are done
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and here is what it looks like, and what it started out as. obviously, much smaller, due to my “learning” when you make a mistake, the vessel becomes smaller. but i got a finished piece.
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here it is at home, and next to a beer bottle for size comparison. (thanks marissa, still drinking your delicious beers)
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So last night, i tried again after my budding success. I knew what i was doing – ish, and didn’t muck about with pictures and such. i got my next bowl done in under 3 hours, i think it was 2 and a bit, and it looked even better. not only that, its much bigger than the last one i made. (same sized blanks)

again, for size comparison, next to a wine bottle. also finished with walnut oil, like the previous.
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Its serial number is 12AML002.
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look forward to my next!

So….

i havent spoken much about the wood shop that I’ve been setting up with bill. anyways, i think we finally have it at the spot where we can, as ruth say: “stop organizing and buying, and start building things”.

anyways, today i finally got to turn my first bowl. I’ve been working towards this for over a month. it takes a lot of work getting all your ducks in a row so that you can turn a bowl.

anyways, lets start at the beginning.

so, all these were taken on the iPhone. super high tech. but i don’t take my camera to the shop all the time.

here is half of our work shop.
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then bill and i decided to challenge ourselves. to build a lathe stand. of course we chose something with angles on it! well, we didn’t get it perfect, but its an amazing stand. we are both pretty proud of it.
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and here it is with the lathe mounted on it.
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so next, we come to turning bowls. I’ve been fascinated with it ever since i read about turning green wood. green wood is wood which has just been cut, and has not been dried. typically for woodworking projects, you have to dry the wood before you do anything. the reason is wet wood cracks as it dries. but if you turn the wood thin enough, instead of cracking, it warps.

I’m such a technical person. i find it really hard to be artistic. and this just amazed me, i could make something, which is very technical in nature, but your using wood, which is very natural, and your having to work within this medium, and the final product end up being artistic. amazing.

the last piece of the puzzle ended up getting my hands on green wood. its not so much of a problem in vancouver, there tend to be lots of felled trees, but i have been having trouble to find anything recently. so i found someone giving away green cherry wood, and i contacted him. turns out he’s a turner, and lives in delta. So this weekend, i went to go visit, and picked up over 20 pieces of pre-cut wood for me!! what an amazing thing to start out turning with. not only that, i got many of my first questions answered. he welcomed me to the vortex that is woodturning, and i think thats a pretty apt explanation.

so i got all this wood back on saturday, and i finished up setting up a few things. finally today i got my first piece of wood mounted on the lathe, and got to learn how to turn a bowl.

let see. here is the pile of wood that i was gifted!

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here is the first piece that i was going to turn.
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here it is with a face plate
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and mounted on the lathe
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here it is spinning
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my first tenon!!!
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this is after ive turned the outside, before mounting the tenon on the chuck.
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and after that, i took no more pictures, for some reason!!!

so, this is what the final bowl ended up looking like!
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not bad, except.. i blew out a small section, which was okay….. but then..

i thought i was icarus, and i flew too close to the sun.. and i totally blew it…
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but ohh well. learning lots. and here is the bottom
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so yeah. turning bowls is a lot of fun though. it took me a long time to figure things out today, but i learned so much. now i have to read more to answer questions that i found out today.
i can’t wait to try my next bowl (and not have it blow out!)