I got a call from the Velvet Glove Restaurant at the Fairmont Hotel in Winnipeg. I had often taken clients to the "Glove" for lunch during my working career but had not returned since my retirement in 2005. The Executive Chef had heard of my work and was asking me if I could make them a salad bowl to use for mixing salads at the tables. I said I could, and that I had a line on an ash tree that might be large enough. He asked if there was some way their logo could be put on the bowl, and I told him I would burn it on.

I completed that bowl for them, but a couple of months later he called again and asked, "Could we get a bigger bowl. This one is great, but for large groups it is not quite large enough.".

I said, "Sure, but I will have to find and dry the wood first, and I would recommend that we use maple for this one. The project could take a year."

Well, a year it did take from finding the blank to delivery, and by that time there was a new Executive Chef who knew nothing about the order until I showed him the emails. When he saw the bowl, he was delighted and took it without hesitation. This series of photos and dialogue explains how I turned this large bowl.

The first task was to find the wood. For that I turned to two friends in Ontario, Bill Neddow, "The Bowl Master", and Lionel Bedard. We just don't have hard maple of the size I needed here in Winnipeg. So, they found me a couple of large blanks that would yield a bowl at least 20" in diameter and 9 to 10" in depth. They salvaged the blanks from a tree in the wood dump used by the city. Just walked out there with chain saws and cut the blanks, waxed them and stuck them on a pallet to ship to Winnipeg. The shipping weight with the pallet was about 600 pounds. Here is the photo when I returned from the trucking company after picking up the blanks. This one has been unloaded, and placed on a log end so I can trim it to size.

This is the second blank. The first one is set up for trimming and this one is still on the back of my truck. The first one is the larger one. It weighed about 275 pounds of solid, soaking wet maple. It was HEAVY, but I got it onto the log and was getting ready to trim some wood off of it. You can guess the size by comparing it to the width of the truck box.

So, here is the blank with my new chain saw on it. The chain saw has an 18" blade, so again you can see that this is a big piece of wood. My lathe has a maximum swing of 20" over the lathe bed, so the first thing I did was use a compass and draw a heavy line circle on the piece about 19 3/4" in diameter to give myself a wee bit of leeway. I used that circle to nip of little pieces all around the blank until it was, I thought, within the 20" diameter. I did the same with the other piece, then fastened them, one at time, to my 2-wheeler and wheeled them down the steps into my basement. One weighed about 250 pounds by this time and the other about 230 pounds. It's a good thing I was blessed with a strong back and shoulders.

I sat and looked at that blank for a while and thought, "How am I going to get this thing onto the lathe?" Well, impatience finally took over and I simply picked it up and plopped it onto the bed of the lathe. Well, that wasn't too bad. Now, though, I had to a faceplate fixed to the center of the thing and then thread the faceplate on to the spindle of the lathe. Again, my trusty compass came to the rescue to find the center of the flat side, which would be the top of the bowl, and it was simple to screw the faceplate to the blank. However, I had to find a way to raise the blank, on its edge, just enough to thread the faceplate to the spindle. To do that I just used little wedges of wood to raise and lower the blank a fraction at a time until the threads lined up. Then, using the hand wheel at the outboard end of the lathe I screwed the faceplate onto the spindle. But, there were several little projections that would hit the lathe bed and not allow the blank to turn. So, one at time, I marked them and trimmed them lower with my electric chain saw while the piece was mounted on the lathe. Finally, I got it set so the piece would spin, with a tolerance of about 1/8" in several places.

Finally, I could slowly begin to true up the blank, get the basic shape of the bowl and put a tenon on the end. Here you see the task has been completed. The tailstock has been in contact with the bowl the whole time to support it. The maximum speed was barely 100 rpm to do this. The process I always use is to use my roughing gouge from the bottom of the bowl. This means that the gouge is cutting across the end grain, not into it. When I finally have to come round to the side of the bowl I switch to a spindle gouge to clean up the end grain, sometimes using a pulling cut. You can see, though, that the roughing gouge has delivered a smooth enough surface for this stage of development.

This simply shows the rounded blank from the other side for a closer look at how it is mounted at the headstock end. I have not trued up this side of the blank at all. My intention is to core the blank to make several bowls and it will be trued up once it is mounted on to the scroll chuck.

I wish I had taken some more pictures of the process of coring these bowls, but I didn't. I simply took the rounded bowl off the faceplate and mounted it the other direction, using a Oneway Stronghold scroll chuck on the tenon I had cut on the bottom. I used the McNaughton coring system that I borrowed it from my good friend, Mike Walter. I had never used one before, so coring the two blanks took me all evening. The major time was spent on the first one, and by trial and error I found the best method for coring these. Rule number one; make sure the cutter is sharp! After trying to make it work I took a good look at the cutter and decided it needed some work at the grinder. It made a world of difference. This photo shows that I got six blanks, two large, two mediums and two small, from the original pieces.

Again, I wish I had more photos of the process of finish turning the bowl. I don't, though, so I will tell you that, after the last step of coring the bowls I coated them all thoroughly with a wax designed to minimize moisture loss. That was done to slow down the drying process so the wood wouldn't crack. One of the small ones did, but the others survived the 8-month wait. They sat in a corner of the garage during the wait. Then, the large one was put back into the Stronghold chuck, and finish turned to within ¼". Another few weeks, and the final turning took place to eliminate any warping since the previous turning. By now, the wood was at about 11% moisture and I felt it was safe to complete the bowl and sand it. In this photo, the bowl is sitting on a table on a beautiful day. I have my comfortable chair, phone, wood burner, a beer and a wasp whacker all sitting there ready for use.

This is a shot from the other side, showing the setup and the start of the burning process. I used a photocopy of the Velvet Glove logo on heavy paper, spray glued and taped to the side of the bowl. The first task was to use a very sharp, very fine Xacto blade to cut the outlines of the logo and strip away the paper in the area I wanted to burn.

For the close up work of burning, I need magnification, so I went to Wal-Mart and bought a pair of magnifying reading glasses that get me really close to the tip of the burner. They work well and I use them in the shop for all kinds of detail work.

This shows the close detail of the burn. I experimented with many patterns, including charring the entire cutout area a solid black. However, I found that the diagonal burn marks were more accurate, created more interest, and just plain looked better. So, that's what I stayed with.

			Here are two shots of the finished bowl from slightly different angles. I included the higher angle so you could see a bit more of the inside of the bowl. The bowl is finished with "Tried and True" boiled linseed oil on the inside. It is food safe oil that I get from Lee Valley Tools, of course. The outside was finished with tung oil, buffed and waxed.

This is a close up of the finished logo. I found the logo much easier to burn on the maple than on the ash due to the maple's closed grain. On ash, the burner wants to follow the lines of the grain.

And, finally, one of my bowls in use. I thought you might like to see where both of the bowls ended up. We were celebrating the birth of our granddaughter with her other set of grandparents on this occasion.