Turning An Oak Salad Bowl

I can’t imagine trying to learn how to turn wood 10 years or so ago. You would have to go to a class, be a member in a woodturning club or just poke and hope for your woodturning lessons!

Fortunately, today we have youtube and other woodturning sites to go to and watch videos about woodturning, learn how to use woodturning tools and find out where to get woodturning tools and supplies.

Learning How to
Turn Wood From Youtube

You can go to youtube and search for the type of project you want to do and find a 100 videos about that woodturing project!

As I journey through my woodturning experience, I hope to categorize videos and lessons on how to turn wood, what projects you might do and where to find to best woodturning supplies and tools.

Learn woodturning from the best of the best!

Sure, you can do this on your own but I’m hoping that you stumble on my blog and find the information I share worth your time, I hope to save you time by giving you the best of the best. Let’s face it, everyone with a phone now has a camera and can take and post videos about their woodturning experiences. Sometimes these aren’t the best and will waste your time.

I look for unique projects along with detailed videos that show you technique and methods that will help you turn your woodlathe projects.

Today I stumbled on a simple video, the guy turns an oak bowl in a matter of minutes. The camera work is pretty good, you can see the tools used and how they are used and he cranks out an oak bowl in a matter of minutes. I don’t think the time was sped up. He uses sunflower oil and grapeseed oil. He also uses a handful of shavings to burnish the oil into the wood ….pretty interesting and I’ve never seen this approach.

As far as tools go, he starts with a quarter sawn oak blank. Then it looks like a bowl gouge with a modified fingernal grind and finishes with a large round edge scraper to create a very nice Oak Salad Bowl. Then he sands down to 220 or so and applies the oil.

I think its 8 minutes or so but it is encouraging because you can see how easy this becomes after some practice ….well, maybe a lot of practice. I think he said he’s been turing for 10 years. But, he’s perfected a techinque over 10 years and you can benefit from the technique and start producing oak salad bowls like his in no time!

Here’s some of the comments I found interesting:

Wod Wagon 1 month ago

that was awesome! I am assuming the wood was dry?

Qiang Zhu 4 months ago

That’s beautiful, both bowl and turning techniques. The base recess seems shallow, how deep is it? how can it hold so steady and safe?

Woodworks&Coracles 4 months ago

Thank you 🙂 Although I never measure the depth of the recess I’d say it is usually around 4-6 mm. The reason it is intentionally shallow is that the deeper the recess the thicker the base of the piece must be to accommodate it. I like to have relatively thin walls to keep my bowls nice and light in weight. Having been turning for over 10 years I have had plenty of opportunity to experiment with different depths of recess and in all that time having work fall off the lathe due to a failure of the recess is extremely rare. When it does happen it is almost exclusively with cherry, which is noticeably more brittle than most of the other woods I use. Keeping the piece stable is also achieved by not pushing too hard with your gouges/scrapers, for which they need to be kept nice and sharp, and also by supporting the edge of the piece with your fingers when performing the finishing cuts.

Oh Zylow 1 year ago

what is that you put on with the brush? does it seal it in any way? and what’s the idea behind using the sawdust I’ve never seen that bowl looks awesome

Woodworks&Coracles 1 year ago

Thanks 🙂 The ‘finish’ I use does not seal the wood in any way, it is just there to bring out the grain and show a potential customer how the piece will look when it gets wet (ie, when they put their dinner on it or wash it afterwards). As stated in the description, this bowl is coated with sunflower oil, though I have recently started using grape seed oil instead. The handful of shavings I use to burnish the piece once it has been oiled. I find the shavings are a great way of generating a bit of friction which puts a nice shine on the wood and they remove any excess oil at the same time. Because timber is naturally anti-bacterial, and I only use species which are non-toxic and have a history of use as tableware, I don’t feel there is any need to seal the timber to protect the food from the wood. Likewise, I don’t eat foods which are highly toxic, so there is no need to seal the wood to protect it from the food. In time, each piece will of course change colour and take on its own unique patina from daily usage. It is precisely this which makes wood such a wonderful material to use 🙂

porkycrook 2 years ago

What do you use to get the sharpness on your chisel?

Woodworks&Coracles 2 years ago

I have a Tormek water cooled grindstone that I use to do all of my sharpening. It only takes 1-2 passes of the chisel over the stone to restore it’s sharpness as I go to the stone as soon as the edge begins to dull. With softer woods like oak and sycamore I will be resharpening every 4-6 bowls whereas on harder woods like cherry and ash they need resharpening every 2-4 bowls. I also use a high speed grinder occasionally, though mostly for re-profiling rather than sharpening.

James McLellan 2 years ago

Nice. How fast was that turning?

Woodworks&Coracles 2 years ago (edited)

Thanks James. I’ve lost the sticker that tells me the lathe speed but it is the top speed for the lathe. From memory the speeds were 450, 950 and 2000 rpm but I can’t be certain. The lathe doesn’t produce much torque and on the slower speeds it just stops spinning if I take a decent cut, but by running it this fast I can overcome that problem.