Serving Platters & Bowls

Mathieu’s Bowl

5″ diameter x 5″

Apple

I started out turning this bowl, but then had to let it set for almost 2 years before I could finish it. When I tried to finish turning it, I was having so much trouble with tear out due to the wild grain pattern, the inclusions, and defects in the wood, that I just about destroyed the bowl. Rather than loose such an interesting piece of wood, I decided to finish the “turning” by hand, with rasps, files, and sandpaper. The basic shape was turned, but every surface you see is actually hand carved. The defects were stabilized with cyanoacrylate glue and the cracks were also filled with cyanoacrylate. And then the handwork began. I had to work my way passed all the tear out until I finally got a clean surface both inside and out. All and all, it was a lot of work, but it turned out rather nice for a piece of wood that many people would have thrown away.

In The Pits – Bowl

10 3/4″ diameter x 1 3/4″

Cherry

The design of this bowl was to see if I could make a relatively thin walled bowl out of a platter blank, and make it “footless” – in other words, it just has a flat spot on the bottom to set on rather than a shaped “platform”.

Which Way’s Up? – Platter

12″ diameter x 1 1/4″

Cherry

I had fun with the design of this platter. It doesn’t have a “foot”. It has two “tops” – you can have either side up and still have a nice platter, one with a convex edge and one with a concave edge. I’ve been told it looks like it could fly away like a flying saucer.

This Way’s Up – Platter

10 1/2″ diameter x 1 1/8″

Cherry

I decided to play off of the “Which Way’s Up” platter with the design for this platter. The top is the same basic shape as the concave edged side of that platter. However, it does have a “foot” and the underside follows the top side as closely as I could get and still have enough thickness for a useable platter.

Cereal Bowl

5 1/4″ diameter x  2″

Maple

Sometimes simplicity is the best way to go on a design. Simple curves and a thin lip were the goal for this bowl. A rather simple but elegant bowl is the result.

Lipped Cereal Bowl

6 1/2″ diameter x 2″

Maple

My goal for this bowl was to make a nice bowl with a lip. After that I wanted to make a thin, uniform wall on the bowl without making the inside of the bowl bigger than the outside of the bowl. And yes, I have done that before – several times!

Live Edge Red Oak Bowl

6 1/2″ x 5 5/8″ x 3 1/4″

Red oak

I wanted to feature the live edge of this bowl so I turned a rather plain bowl – no fancy lips, or changes in curvature, or the like, just a simple smooth curve to the sides. Due to the roughness of the bark on this piece, I left the walls of the bowl thicker to balance it out.

Pearl’s Bowl

5″ diameter  x 3 1/2″

Applewood burl

I’ve turned figured apple before, but this burl had so many voids and inclusions that it was very hard to keep it from blowing apart as I turned it. I wanted to keep as much of the interesting parts of the burl as I could so I intentionally left the walls thick. This allowed me to showcase the burl wood rather than the bowl itself.

Pedestal Bowl

5 5/8″ diameter x 3 1/4″

Maple, walnut

This bowl is the result of a rather spectacular blow up. I was turning a maple bowl that I wanted to try out my new beading tool on. Unfortunately, I made the inside of the bottom of the bowl, just a little bit bigger than the outside – and the bottom came out of the bowl – catastrophically – shattering the sides of the bowl as well. I was going to put it in my firewood pile, but my wife suggested trying to save it. I glued the broken pieces of the side back together and cut the bottom flat. I then glued a slab of walnut to it. After turning the walnut to match the maple I turned a pedestal as the “foot” of the bowl. I thought the maple and walnut were a bit too much of a contrast so I used a dark stain to make the maple just about the same color as the walnut. I intentionally made it a close but not perfect color match so you could see there were two different woods used in making the bowl.

Ric’s Bowl

4 1/8″ diameter x 2 1/4″

Poplar

You usually don’t think of poplar as a wood of choice for turning – except for teaching or just trying a new technique on. It is a very easy to turn wood. But, it can also make a very nice turning, especially if you stain it and give it a good finish. You can make very fine shapes with it as can be seen on the lip of this bowl. I left the bottom of this bowl thick because I liked the way it made it feel.

Which Bowl?

5 5/8″ x 5 1/4″ x 3″

Found wood

When I start a bowl turning, I never know just what the bowl will look like. I might have an idea for the shape, but sometimes things just go off on a tangent. My goal for this bowl was to turn a nice live edge bowl. However, about half way through turning the outside of the bowl things just sort of went off in a very different direction than I was planning. This really is just a single bowl. I stained the “inside” or “top” bowl to make it look even more like there are two bowls.