July bowls: Bradford Pear and Sycamore Maple Bowls

Both were initially turned during the World of Wood demonstrations on July 21, 2015.  Jim Finley critiqued the Bradford Pear bowl and helped me to get the walls thinner.  On July 25, I remounted both bowls and turned them with finishing cuts and to reshape the outer profiles of the bowls so that the curves of the bowls appear to disappear within the supporting foot of the bowls.  I also turned down the tennon and foot of the bowls to make the bowls' footprints smaller.  The rule of thumb is to make the foot 1/3 the bowl height.  These bowls are just under 6 inches in diameter and just over 2 1/2 inches tall.  For these pictures, the bowls have had 3-4 coats of General Bowl Finish with some sanding between coats.  They will get another 1-2 more coats of finish before they are complete.

Bradford Pear (Pyrus calleryana)
Sycamore Maple (Acer pseudoplatanus)

Both of these trees are invasive, so the more bowls from these weeds the better.

More bowls

Here are a few pictures of Aspen bowls that all came from the same log.

Square bowl, 7" in diameter and 3" tall.

It's interesting to see the grain pattern on the inside and the outside of the bowl.

Classic round bowl about 7.75" in diameter and 2.5 inches tall.  This one has an interesting grain pattern. (see Nov. 6)

The Aspen log was felled over 2 years ago, and the section I cut for the bowl blanks was 14 inches in diameter.  The log had dried out a bit, but there was still some residual moisture in the wood. The square bowls take a little more attention, because I have to cut the blank into a cube with the face of the cube, which will become the top of the bowl, as close to a perfect square as possible.  When turning, I have to avoid hitting the blank where I want the top of the bowl to remain square. First, I make the corners about 0.5 inches thick by plunging in a parting tool to the depth of the outside of the bowl.  I then move the parting tool to remove wood from the bottom side of the corners until the thickness of the corners is about 0.25 inches. Later, when sanding the bowl, the sanding will take the thickness of the corners down to 0.125 inch.  As always, when turning the inside of the bowl I have to be careful with the thickness of the bowl sides, particularly because the corners tend to mask the outside profile of the bowl as I am hollowing out the inside.  The classic bowl is probably fully dried out now.

3 in tall Spittoon 6 in diameter, 4 in tall (see Nov 6)

	This Bradford Pear (6 in diameter, 2.5 in tall) bowl has a deep polish to it that makes it seem like glazed pottery.

New wood species

I ordered several bowl blanks from Got Wood. They were species of wood that I have not had any previous bowl turning experience (except for Cherry):  Bradford Pear, Chinaberry, Red Elm, Cherry, and Ash.  These bowl blanks are pre-cut round. Blanks are green wood (not dried), fully sealed in paraffin wax to guard against defects and too quick drying.  The pieces contain no pith, checks, or cracks. 

green blanks with paraffin

The first bowls I turned were of Bradford Pear and Chinaberry, both 6 inches in diameter and 3 inches thick.  I used a 2 1/8 inch diameter Forstner bit in my drill press to drill a .25 inch deep hole in the center of the blank and mounted the blank in the scroll chuck using the chuck in an expansion mode. 

My first step was to true up the blank sides to form a cylinder and remove the paraffin coating.  On the tailstock side I turned a tenon about 2 1/2 inches in diameter and 3/8 inches long.   I shaped the curved bottom of the bowl and put in an indentation near the tenon that would later become the base of the bowl.  Using the tenon I reversed chucked the bowl and hollowed out the inside of the bowl.   The Bradford Pear was particularly aromatic and quite wet, but it turned nicely and showed very little tear out in the end grain.

The bottom of the bowl has a curved surface where the side meets the bottom of the bowl.  I put a small band on the outside lip of the bowl and otherwise had the side of the bowl taper to the base. 

Bradford Pear:  Happy Birthday Lady Ariel

The inside of the Bradford Pear bowl shows a subdued grain pattern and the wood has an yellow-orange tint.  The Chinaberry blank was turned in the same manner and I found the wood to be aromatic, not as fragrant as the Bradford Pear, and the shavings were not as wet as the Pear.  Chinaberry also showed more tear out on the end grain, so I had to be more careful to get a smooth finish.

On this bowl I put a small cove cut on the outside of the bowl, about an inch below the lip of the bowl and then a simple taper to the bowl base.

Chinaberry

The grain pattern on the Chinaberry bowl is very distinct, and the wood had an orange to red coloration.  Turning green wood is definitely easier than turning dry wood as the shavings come off almost in continuous strips. My hands often felt damp from the spray coming off the chisel as it cut into the green wood.  I used the carbide tools for most of the turnings, plus the parting chisel and a round nose scraper to smooth out the bottom of the bowls and remove most of the tear out on the outsides of the bowls.   

Once the bowls were completely turned, I reverse chucked them in a jam chuck to remove the tenon from the bottom of the bowl.  I could only get the tenon down to about the size of a quarter and about 1/4 inch long, because the tail stock gets in the way of the parting tool, so to remove that remaining tenon, I used a hand chisel and then power sanded the bottom.   

To sand the bowls I used Abranet sanding mesh, but it was really needed for the Bradford Pear because the wet wood would have clogged up regular sandpaper.  The Chinaberry was not as wet, so I used both Abranet and regular sandpaper to finish it.  Both bowls got a finish coat of Walnut Oil and once dry, they will get a final wax finish.

Because of  the high moisture content of these green bowls, I am storing them in a plastic bag with their moist shavings, a combination that hopefully will allow the wood to dry slowly, without too much movement or checking.   At this point I am not sure how long it will take for these bowls to dry out, so this will be an experiment to see what it takes to dry these kinds of wood.