Ring Bowl
Dennis in Southern Oregon
While preparing to turn a hat from a liquid amber blank a few years ago, I parted off a large ring-shaped chunk of wood from above the brim and outside the crown of the hat. On a whim, after finishing the hat, I rough turned the off-cut into a ring-shaped bowl and put it away to dry. Recently, I ran across it again and decided to see what I could do with it. This is the result. The outside diameter is a bit over16 inches.
The project was a challenge from start to finish. First of all, the rough-turned piece had warped quite a bit, making it difficult to effect an initial mounting to allow the piece to be evaluated properly and trimmed to allow a robust mounting to be achieved. A total of four separate mountings were used, all making use of a large chipboard disk mounted on a faceplate.
I encountered an interesting phenomenon while turning the inner face of the interior wall of the bowl. Muscle memory developed from many years of turning seemed to fail me. I ended up hacking my way through that part like a newby turner. Thinking it over, I don’t think that one encounters that particular turning geometry in other projects unless one is turning with the lathe running in reverse.
