Bowl with lid

So how do you make a bowl with a lid? 

For this project I started out with a cube of walnut, roughly 7.5 inches square and 4.5 inches high.  I used a compass on the top of the cube to draw a circle that inscribed the largest circle possible, and then took the cube to the band saw and cut away the excess wood to create a cylinder.  
I attached a faceplate on one end of the cylinder with 4 screws and then  mounted the cylinder and faceplate on the lathe and bringing up the tailstock to steady the cylinder on the lathe.    

The first step was to round off the cylinder, cleaning up the uneven cuts from the band saw.  This also reduced a lot of the vibration caused by the cylinder being slightly out of round.  I also trued up the end of the cylinder opposite from the faceplate by moving the tailstock away from the cylinder.  Returning the tailstock to the cylinder for support, I rounded off corners at the ends of the cylinder.  I then decided how to divide the cylinder into a bowl and lid, making the bowl about twice as wide as the lid.  I selected to make the lid from the part of the cylinder next to the faceplate and the bowl from the cylinder section next to the tailstock.  I started cutting the cylinder apart with a parting tool and then completed the cut with a hand saw.  The lid would be more complicated to turn because the screws from the faceplate penetrate into the base of the cylinder about 0.75 inch, so the shape of the lid had to take into account these four screw holes.  

Before cutting the cylinder into two sections for the bowl and lid, I turned tenons into both ends of the cylinder and these tenons would permit mounting that part of the cylinder into a scroll chuck for hollowing out the interior of these parts. 

After cutting the cylinder into two sections, I removed the faceplate from the lid section and mounted the tenon in the scroll chuck.  I formed the edge of the lid that would fit onto the bowl after hollowing out most of the inside of the lid, leaving a pointed nub in the center of the inside of the lid.  The nub forms naturally as you hollow a section and with careful turning you can eliminate the nub (as I did in the interior of the bowl).  In the case of the lid, I decided to use the nub as a feature and allowed it to remain in the center of the lid.  

Once the inside of the lid was finished I removed it from the chuck and attached the bowl section in the chuck for hollowing it.  The most critical part of this operation is to fit the lid on the bowl, so the first turning cuts on the bowl are to set the bowl edge that the lip of the lid will sit in.   Getting the lid to fit takes time, and once the lid fits, then the lid can be pushed on the bowl and the top of the lid can be cleaned up.  For this bowl, I wanted a knob in the center of the lid and then I needed to use a cove cut to eliminate the screw holes that were left from the faceplate.  Since the screw holes were  .75 inches in depth, this required removing enough wood to eliminate the holes while shaping the top of the lid.  Once I got the lid shape where I wanted it, I sanded it.

After removing the lid, the bowl itself can be hollowed out.  The bowl shape has a rounded inside corner at the bottom of the bowl and the wall of the bowl is about .25 inches wide.  With the inside of the bowl done, I sanded it.  I used a jam chuck and tailstock to position the bowl so I could reduce the remaining tenon on the bottom of the bowl.   After removing about an inch from the tenon I put several notches in the remaining tenon, making each notch deeper into the bottom of the bowl, so that the bowl now will sit on a small section of the original tenon.  Once I had sanded the outside of the bowl bottom I removed it from the jam chuck and used a hand chisel to cut down the remaining  center of the tenon. 

Turn the bowl over for surprise detail work.  The layers were done with the triangle tool and raise the bowl to make an elegant foot.

The finish I am using on this bowl is Mahoney walnut finishing oil and wax.   Overall dimensions of the finished bowl are diameter 6.5 inches and height of 3.5 inches.  

Oh yeah, I also have about a third of a garbage can full of walnut shavings and they will eventually get spread on the paths between our raised garden beds to keep the weeds down.