bowls

[mark sanger]

Hi all

Today I started to day finishing lids for a few lidded forms. Then I was looking through my sketch book over coffee and found a few drawings I have been meaning to do for a while which involved making a sycamore wide rim bowl.

Any way I started making these and got the bug. So I decided to rough out some seasoned blanks and finish/scrape ( down to the sanding and finishing process) and finish some seasoned roughed blanks.

Anyway one thing led to another and I got distracted. The new piece fell by the wayside as I got totally addicted to preparing the bowls for finishing. I had to get some done as I have a let's say people/outlets who are very patient waiting list for some work . I personally don;t think four months is long but there ya go, apparently I am too laid back, I also need some more space in my workshop for new projects I am working on, and not forgetting the readies I get for them.

I thought I would show you these so that you know I do not always colour and texture wood as most of these will be left natural with a few of the wide rim platter being textured and scorched around the rims. Or perhaps I will spray them in red paint, only joking they will stay natural.

Sizes range from around 16inches down to 6 in

Take care

 

[johnny.t.]

Just one or two then Mark :shock: :lol:
JT

 

[miles_hot]

I like the new segmented / multi axis work there, must have been a tight fit to get a form that tall on the lathe

Miles

 

[mark sanger]

Hi Johnny

without being too self indulgent, I didn't break in to much of a sweat with these, got to stop for coffee you know. or two or three.:lol:

Miles_hot

:lol: :lol:

 

[johnny.t.]

......I didn't break in to much of a sweat with these, got to stop for coffee you know. or two or three....

By the looks of that heap of bowls I reckon you must have had about 17 cups of coffee, you must have just been a caffine fueled blur :lol:

 

[mark sanger]

......I didn't break in to much of a sweat with these, got to stop for coffee you know. or two or three....

By the looks of that heap of bowls I reckon you must have had about 17 cups of coffee, you must have just been a caffine fueled blur :lol:

:lol: :lol: They don't take that long. Most of my bowls are wide rim, so you are only removing a small bit from the inside. This way I can show off the grain on the rim and save time making them. Charge less and sell more. Well that is the idea any how.

Eight inch sycamore is ready to sand in around five minutes.

George doesn't call me bish bash bosh for nothing you know.

 

[cornucopia]

George doesn't call me bish bash bosh for nothing you know.

:lol: will i ever live that one down :lol: :roll:

 

[miles_hot]

Eight inch sycamore is ready to sand in around five minutes.

George doesn't call me bish bash bosh for nothing you know.

Stack me, that puts into perspective the 3 hours it took me to do the inside and outside of my little padauk 9 inch bowl! And that's before I've sanded it to a mm of it's life and am yet to reverse it!

So far to travel but what a lovely road

Miles

 

[mark sanger]

Eight inch sycamore is ready to sand in around five minutes.

George doesn't call me bish bash bosh for nothing you know.

Stack me, that puts into perspective the 3 hours it took me to do the inside and outside of my little padauk 9 inch bowl! And that's before I've sanded it to a mm of it's life and am yet to reverse it!

So far to travel but what a lovely road

Miles

Don't think I turn like it all the time as I do not.

Sycamore is very easy compared to padauk which is frankly a so in so to turn compared to sycamore. One of the reasons I stopped turning exotics was due to how hard they are.

People don;t want to pay much for a bowl, at least not compared to how much longer it takes to turn the exotics and price of blank. Plus quite a few galleries I sell in now will not stock exotics. Mind you if we did not turn them then the people who farm them would starve.

But I spent a lot of time roughing green bowls and it is a fantastic way of building on the tool techniques.

speed is not important, safety is.

Also I use a very long grind bowl gouge which has about an inch grind on the side. By dropping the handle and keeping the bevel in contact you can take a half inch cut on green wood and not much less on seasoned sycamore if you have a powerful lathe.


George

No you won't, but it is true. my workshop is not a safe place when I am roughing as you know, :lol:

It is much more fun now I have a bigger lathe though. It is great as the power feeds into it as you take a bigger cut so no loss of power. In fact I have not stalled it yet.

Can't wait to get some freshly felled wood to really let go with it.

Next time you come down bring a riot shield to stand behind.

 

[tekno.mage]

That's an impressive pile of bowls you've made there, Mark.
And yes, 4 months is a long time to wait for a bowl - especially if you've something tasty waiting to go in it!

Did you not find the growing stack of completed bowls piled on the headstock vibrated and wobbled rather a lot while you were working on the next bowl in line? <very> Or were you just testing how little vibration there is from your shiny new lathe when it's working?

Did you stop making them when the pile of bowls reached the ceiling or when you ran out of suitable blanks?

Seriously though, roughing out a large number of one type of item is *really* good practice - as even a novice like myself discovered last year when I roughed turned loads of little boxes to leave drying indoors (in the airing cupboard) over the winter months. Not only did I get much quicker at doing them (especially hollowing out) but I also got more accurate and needed to check measurements less often the more of them I did. When I then finished off some boxes I'd roughed earlier in the year, all that practice really did pay off - a better finish off the tool (especially on the insides) so less sanding needed and for some odd reason I was also able to fit the lids more quickly as well - which is not something I'd been able to practice on the roughed boxes.

tekno.mage

 

[mark sanger]

Hi Mage

I hope you are well.

Roughing bowl/form is a very good way indeed to practice tool control.

One of the reasons I also got addicted to this yesterday is that I am re-visiting "Beginners mind" within my Zen practice with my teacher at the moment.

I was practising looking at my basic principles and using them as a form of meditative practice of finishing the outside curve in one cut and one out breath.

To many this will seem odd I know, but there becomes a stage in any type of work/discipline that for me should be taken to a higher level. Technical skill alone is not enough.

Woodturning is obviously my work. But I do not see it as work.

I am very privileged to be able to turn full time and to love doing it.

Zen is about concentrating on the here and now with exclusion of all else and turning is a brilliant way to practice this.

I know some will find what I am talking about rather different to the way they may think. But for me my work transcends just the making of items. Making a piece has to have all of me in it or I feel empty in the making process.

 

[tekno.mage]

Hi Mark,

I can see where you are coming from with the Zen/meditation practise whilst turning and with taking any discipline up to a higher level once technical ability has been gained.

I'm not a confident enough woodturner yet to be able to achieve such things, but I do know that a certain kind of relaxed tool control is needed to get nice clean cuts and good flowing shapes - and I find that state of mind is something that only comes with lots and lots of repetition.

I often feel a bit tense and anxious when I've not done any turning for a while (as my workshop is unheated and draughty) so I start off by roughing a few square spindles to round, and then rough out a blank to something similar to the item I'm actually going to make so I can practice the cuts I'm going to make - I often need to make test cuts to remind myself of what will work best, especially when shaping the outside of a bowl or platter - which is odd as I don't have the same problem with the inside of a bowl!

You'll may laugh when I say that the most relaxing and meditative part of woodturning for me is the sanding and finishing of the item (I know plenty of turners who positively hate sanding) - but I'm far better at finishing wood (flat or turned) than I am at turning it - and probably always will be! It's when I'm finishing a piece that ideas for new designs tend to pop up - maybe because then I'm no longer focusing on the form of the piece I've just finished shaping?

I also find doing repetative decoration of wood off the lathe (pyrographed textures, piercings, etc) is a very productive time for the mind to wander off on its own and come back solutions to technical problems like tricky workholding, or what order to make something that needs reversing several times and is made in several parts that must fit tightly together.

Tekno.mage

 

[mark sanger]

Hi Techno.mage

You thinking you are not a confident enough turner should not hinder you. Mindfulness can be practised whether we are drinking a cup of tea or just roughing down a spindle. It is about total absorption in the hear and now.

I am certainly no expert at it and practice it every day. But letting go of what we are thinking about while we are doing it gives the process over for me to a connected path of creativity.

Not wanting to turn this thread or the forum into a Zen subject ( of which I am no expert, hence having a teacher) it is my intention to discuss it on my blog and the way I work in a bit more detail and how I am going about it. ( when I get time after finishing a few bowls) :lol:

Whether it be sanding or roughing, full concentration can be applied. It is just keeping it there that I find difficult.



You may be interested in a book that is very good explaining the thought process behind technique and being one with what you are doing at that is.

"Zen in the art of Archery"

It is a very interesting book and is not so much about teaching Zen but understanding how the process is transferred to practical applications, in this instance Archery. It was written by a German who wrote it with a western perspective after studying Archery in Japan for numerous years.

Very interesting.


anyway like I said people may find my mind set a challenge and I do not want to turn the forum into a platform to project the way I think. Hence why I started my blog.

thank you for your contribution.

 

[miles_hot]

Mark

That's very interesting and a fascinating insight into what happens when you attain a very high level of technical expertise mind you at my lowly positions I'd worry about asphyxiation if I followed the advanced path "meditative practice of finishing the outside curve in one cut and one out breath"

Miles

 

[mark sanger]

Mark

That's very interesting and a fascinating insight into what happens when you attain a very high level of technical expertise mind you at my lowly positions I'd worry about asphyxiation if I followed the advanced path "meditative practice of finishing the outside curve in one cut and one out breath"

Miles

:lol: :lol: yes I do not want to be responsible for woodturners falling down dead all over the country :lol: through not breathing.