Southwestern Bowl

Southwestern Bowl

Featured in the "Brag Book"at Woodcraft.com.

This bowl is made of 99 separate pieces of wood, glued up to make the pattern you see here. Made of Mahogany, Walnut, Maple, Bloodwood, and Granadillo, this bowl measures:

6 inches tall by 11.5 inches wide. When the individual layers are complete, they are positioned and clamped together and the corners are drilled to allow a dowel to be used for alignment during glue up.

Here is the bowl blank during glue up. Using plywood to support it, several clamps are placed around the perimeter.	The bowl is cut round on the bandsaw.
A piece of 3/4" plywood was then glued to the bottom of the bowl. The bowl is attached to a faceplate and mounted to the Lathe. You can see here the bowl is already hollow. This is because each layer was precut with a jigsaw before glue up.	The lathe is unique as a wood working tool because it has no cutting edge. The actual cutting is done with hand tools. Here I am shaping the outside of the bowl. The original diameter was larger than could be mounted over the lathe bed. The head was rotated outboard for the initial turning.
After the plywood is split from the bottom of the bowl with a hand chisel, the bowl is re-mounted on a scroll chuck. This allows me to start work on the bottom.	After a good sanding and a branding Iron, it's time to apply finish to the bottom.