I am being commissioned to turn a bowl for a fellow artist, knitter and neighbor Shaku. I thought I would take this opportunity to document the process.
Turning wood puts you into a near timeless zen state. Not unlike developing photographs in a darkroom. Where you go to work in the afternoon telling your self, “I’ll just go in for an hour…” You leave about an hour later and it’s pitch black out. You’ve been in there for nine hours!!
When I turn wood, my mind is so focused on that exact point where the bevel of my blade rides the exact contour of the form, shaving off micro-thin ribbons of wood. There’s no room for other thoughts or distractions. One wrong move, one error of judgment, one degree off while hugging the contour and the entire thing can crack violently into many pieces spinning across the room at 1800RPMs. Yes, I do wear a full face mask for just such occasions.
Shaku was born and partly raised in Africa, so the first thing that came to mind was to use one of my favorite woods, Paduak. It’s from South Africa. The wood is somewhat dense, like red oak. It has an open pore, and cuts easily but can be have a coarse texture, until you sand it down with many successive grades of sandpaper. It can splinter off in big chunks when turning if you’re not being careful.
Here’s the wood blank I acquired.
Paduak Wood Bowl Blank
To save on the wear of my roughing gouge I cut the corners off.
Center Marked and Corners Cut
Mounted and ready to go!
Ready to find it's true form
Starting to look sexy!
Turning a recessed foot to prep for hollowing out
Partly hollowed.
I was getting way to hungry and finding it hard to focus when I messed up the foot. I’ve rigged it up in reverse so I can true up and rebuild the foot before finishing hollowing it out. I’ll save that for a later date and part two of this post.
