Wood turnings, segments, bowls, vases, sculptured collectible wood art

HOW  A COLLECTIBLE MUSEUM QUALITY ART BOWL OR VASE IS CREATED.

The first procedure  in making a bowl  or vase is to make a full size pencil drawing of the piece and determine the type of wood to be used. I use various types of wood such as black walnut, maple, yellow heart , blood wood, purple heart plus several more as the design dictates.  I next determine the number of layers  the piece is to be cut  into based upon the height of the pieces and the thickness of the woods being used. Each layer and each segment in a layer can be made from many different kinds of wood. My pieces vary from five to 25 layers with 50 to 300  segments in total.  Once this has all been done I use a computer program to determine the size of each segment to be cut. I then cut all the segments at one time. The next step in the process would be to glue the  layer segments into a half circle using rubber bands to hold them together while the glue dries. Once the half circle are dried I sand the butt ends of each piece and glue them together to form a circle. The circles are then sanded flat on each side. The bowl blank is formed by gluing all the layers together. By the time a bowl blank is formed many hours have been spent in its construction. This can range from 5 to 50 hours depending upon the size and design of the piece. The next step is glue all the layers together and turn the piece. In some cases based upon  the design, the piece will be created in several steps by gluing just a few layers before turning, followed by adding several more layers and continuing the turning process until all layers are added to the piece . 

This photo shows  a vases blank before it is sanded and turned on the lath. The final process is sanding the finished bowl.  This process begins with using 60 grid sand paper progressing up to 400 grid. The bowl is finished with several layers of lacquer and in some cases by a layer of  wax.

This the finished photo of the previous vase.

 I hope this give you an ideal of the process in making a bowl or vases. This method of building a bowl is very time consuming but one can create a very unique piece with a  variety of colors and wood textures far different than if one was to use a single piece of wood. All of my pieces take at lease 10 hours and many can consume 50 hours or more in completion process. I hope that you will take the time to view some of the pieces that I have made. Thanks for view my web sight.

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