Walnut Bowl, Enclosed Form

This Walnut Bowl is about five inches in diameter and 1-1/2 inches deep. Walnut wood is hard, dense, tight-grained, and polishes to a smooth finish. Cutting it on the lathe is like carving chocolate. It smells kind of sour when cut - I guess that keeps me from wanting to put the shavings on my ice cream... It can vary in color from creamy white sapwood to deep brown heartwood. It's long been a favorite for gun stocks, and also popular for guitar bodies. The finish is mineral oil and beeswax so it's food safe.

With this one, one challene was how to hollow it out without specialized hollowing equipment. The other challenge was sanding the inside - sticking your fingers in through a 3" opening with a sharp edge on a lathe spinning at 1200 RPM is a little troublesome - the sandpaper would catch and my fingers would get bounced around inside the rim like a marble in a bowl that you're shaking - ouch. They make specialized tools for both jobs, but unless someone orders enough of these to cover the cost, I'm doing it the old hard way - hence the extra charge for enclosed forms.

Enclosed bowls are the price of the wood plus $1.50 per square inch of profile. This bowl would be about $19.75 plus shipping.

Square Turned Bowl - Maple

One of these bowls is not like the other...one of these bowls just isn't the same...

This Square Turned Bowl is made, i think with maple. It turned very nicely. Its closed-grain nature finishes smooth and shiny, it's hard, and it cuts cleanly. The dimensions are 7" wide x 2" tall.

I don't usually include views of the bowl from the bottom, but you just don't get the full effect of this one without the bottom view. It's a bit treacherous to make, with sharp corners whirring at 850 or 1250 RPM to bang up your fingers, and takes a lot of care, but the effect is way cool.

Price for a bowl like this: diameter x height x $1.50, plus wood. In this case, about $30 total.

Oregon Myrtlewood Bowl - 6"x3"

This 6" wide, 3" deep Oregon Myrtlewood Bowl turned out great - the wood has some beautiful figuring, and I really like the smooth, round shape and thin walls. A bowl like this would be $35.00.

Oregon Myrtlewood, also called California Laurelwood, is a hardwood with a wide variety of colors depending on the minerals in the soil where it is grown - from light tan to dark brown, olives and reds, and blacks from spalting as in the bowl shown. It is noted as one of the world's most beautiful woods. This bowl, and all my bowls, are finished with mineral oil and beeswax - the mineral oil brings out the natural colors, and the beeswax protects the wood and adds a satin sheen. It is food safe, washable, and ready to use.

For any open-formed bowl, multiply the height times the diameter, and add to this the price of the raw wood 'blank' and that's your price.