Following the Holiday this year, I began regular turning on my lathe, working on my tool sharpening skills and use of the different lathe tools. I had a lot of small cutoffs from charcuterie boards I made for presents and turned them into several small bowls. The cherry ones are richly colored. These small bowls are meant to be landing places for that pepper mill that always leaves a little pepper behind on the counter. They are only as thick as a 3/4″ board.
Not throwing away even the smallest pieces of wood, I made a few other practice items. I heard making an egg was a thing for wood turners. I used a scrap of walnut with a diagonal grain pattern and turned it into an egg, about the size of a real egg. Then I turned a scrap of sycamore into an egg cup to hold it. The challenge here was coming up with the small supporting chucks in wood to hold these while sanding them.
The small maple top was made from another scrap piece of maple and is about 1-1/4″ across. It spins really well.
I had a small oddly shaped piece of walnut and attempted this turn leaving the uneven edge around the top. The wood grain turned out really pleasing. The small sycamore bowl was a first attempt at a small bowl. The sycamore I have is from the base of a large tree and the grain is very dense and cross linked so has definitely no chance of splitting.
These are two medium sized bowl I made from chunks of maple firewood. The first is a standard shaped bowl. The second is turned with the inside under cutting the lip of the bowl giving it a nice appearance. Maple, once sanded and finished has a very smooth appearance.
These are some medium sized bowls I was practicing on, with some scrap and cracked pieces of walnut I had. Walnut has a beautiful grain and I was working on the final pass with a sharp gouge and different sanding techniques to bring out the grain pattern. The intent is always to sand as little as possible so as to raise the least amount of dust into the air.
These are some different practice bowls I made this January. I was experimenting with different bowl shapes and edges. The bowls from these last two photo galleries I donated to the Feed My People Food Bank annual Empty Bowls fundraiser, which is something our Chippewa Valley Woodturners Guild does every year. People who attend and donate at the fundraiser come away with either a wood or pottery bowl.