Wood Bowl

Apr 13, 2021

This is my eighth wood bowl!

Overview

Start: Jan 23, 2021
End: Apr 13, 2021
Wood Species: Jack Pine

The burl for this bowl was collected at the same general location as the burl for a separate bowl project in Minnesota. It was extracted and completed in a similar manner to that burl/bowl.

Bark Removal

My first step was to remove the bark from the burl. Because I allowed the burl to dry with the bark attached, removing the bark was difficult. I initially used a hammer, wood chisel and flathead screwdriver until I had removed the hardest bark.

I then used a drill and red nylon drill brush¹ to remove the remaining bark. The brush was soft enough to not damage the underlying wood.

Top View: After Bark Removal with Red Nylon Drill Brush

Remove the bark immediately after extracting the burl from the tree.

Be careful with nylon brushes as they tend to melt and leave nylon residue on the wood if spun on a particular area too long.

Avoid gouging past the inner bark wood with sharp tools.

Carving

Next, I needed to find a way to safely and accurately hollow the bowl.
Precise control here was critical because penetrating through the bowl edge was a non-starter.

I used the Orbicut 40 bit² to hollow the bowl.

Constantly check the bowl thickness. Calipers are very handy for checking thickness. It’s better to work more slowly and cautiously when coring out the burl.

Inner Finish Work

Next, I moved on to sanding/polishing the inner surface of the burl, partially to even out the divots formed from the Orbicut 40’s spherical shape.

Coarse Sanding

I started with an 80 grit flap wheel³.

Fine Sanding/Polishing

On smaller bowls, I’ve used a dremel and several polishing wheels⁴, however it became apparent that I would use far too many of them and take far too long to complete a bowl of this size with them. I tried to use a black nylon wheel⁵, but it proved to aggressive and tended to leave melted residue easily. I arrived at using an orange nylon wheel⁶. This wheel didn’t appear to leave residue and was able to polish and sand minor carving scratches. Furthermore, it was highly effective at cleaning and polishing the large cracks and uneven features within the base of the bowl.

Outer Finish Work

I then moved on to sanding/polishing the outer surface of the burl, partially to even out the divots formed from the aggressive red nylon wheel¹ as well as to remove gouges from the use of sharp tools to remove the outer bark.

Removal of Marks from Red Nylon Wheel

Removal of Sharp Tool Gouges from Outer Bark Removal

Unfortunately, I had a few, deep gouges (penetrating into the sap wood) from the use of the wood chisel and screwdriver when removing the outer bark. These deep gouges proved fairly hard to remove. I had hoped that the orange nylon wheen⁶ would be sufficient but unfortunately it wasn’t able to remove large gouges. I also tried using large abrasive ball bits⁷ ⁸ ⁹ ¹⁰ but they were unable to remove enough bulk material and also lost much of their abrasive material rather quickly.

I resorted to using a fine, rotary burr by Kutzall¹¹ to even out the deep gouges.

I then used 320 grit sandpaper to sand the gouges as well rim of the bowl (to give the rim a rounded curvature for softer handling).

Sanding Smoothed Gouges Using 320 Grit Sandpaper

I then used the orange nylon wheel⁶ to sand/polish smoothed gouges.

Top View: Sanding/Polishing Smoothed Gouges Using Orange Nylon Wheel

Side View: Sanding/Polishing Smoothed Gouges Using Orange Nylon Wheel

Unfortunately, this means that these smoothed patches where the gouges once were, now possess a slightly different color compared to the rest of the bowl. This is because the gouges had penetrated into the sap wood (past the vascular cambrium) where as for the majority of the bowl, I had tried not go go deeper than the vascular cambrium layer.

Wipe Down

Before applying the finish coats of oil, I wiped-off as much of the residual sawdust from the burl as possible using a lightly dampened, paper towel.

Don’t wipe with a heavily damp fabric as this will raise the grain. Instead wipe with a mostly dry fabric or use a vacuum or soft brush to remove the residual sawdust.

Finish Coats

The last step was to apply finish to stain and protect the bowl as well as to enhance the chatoyancy of the bowl. For this I used Walnut colored Rubio Monocoat¹² following the instructions on the back of the can. This finish is highly respected in the woodworking community as it is in-grain, requires just one application that takes about 15 minutes to apply and once dried (after ~5 days), is food-safe.