| May 30, 2025
To practice any art, no matter how badly, is a way to make your soul grow. So do it. [Kurt Vonnegut]
It’s been a while since I started turning bowls. I had the basic concepts down, but I had a lot of questions about what the wood was presenting and how I should handle it. 2025 was supposed to be about learning joinery, making boxes, but I used up all my flat wood and waiting for the sawmill to be put together, it seemed like time to get comfortable spinning things.
I had a few logs that had been drying so I worked on those regularly to produce some bowl blanks. Some days at NovaLabs were just a lot of time with the bandsaw cutting flat chunks, cutting bowl blanks, and then painting AnchorSeal onto the pieces. But, I’ve about processed everything that’s been sitting around, so now it became time to “so do it.”
These little bowls are fun to turn; I had turned a few larger items and gave those away already. With these 4" bowls, I could take a piece of wood and turn to finish. At first, it took 2 evenings, one to get it pretty close, and then another evening at the lathe to cleanup any issues, trim up the foot, and apply finish. There’s a varieties of techniques I’ve used the last several months. I’ve been working with the bowl gouge with a 50 degree bevel and making sure to “ride the bevel” to reduce the chattering. I’ve worked on both push-and-pull techniques depending on where I was with the bowl and what I was trying to produce (push to form and hollow, pull to cleanup at the end). I worked with various sanding techniques (the sanding disc for the drill is my fave).
It’s just a few dozen bowls, but I feel so much better at the lathe. I’m starting to see the grains, how the bowl will emerge, working around imperfections, and just enjoying the process of seeing the object emerge.
So, if you’re in doubt, take a deep breath, commit, and do it. You’re on your way to finding your soul.