earliest bowls

Re: earliest bowls

John Stegall

I bought my shopsmith in 79 but never made a segmented bowl. Obviously you made the better decision on what to make with yours. I was making mirrors based on a French curve so I was using elongated oval mirrors. After you demonstrated at Hill Country Turners, I made my first mirrors on my Jet 1220vs.

I did not take photographs of anything.

You were doing fantastic work then and you still are.

my earliest bowls

John K Jordan

Good fun! Good work and clever design. I've never made a segmented anything.

I found pictures of my early bowl attempts. No Shopsmith. I wanted to make something for my son in architecture school so I went to Home Depot and asked if they had any lathes. It was one of those horrible Craftsman tube lathe clones. A set of tools from Sears and I was ready. I learned about turning from the back of the printed manual that came with the lathe. I made the one thing I bought it for, turned some spindles, then let it gather dust.

One day I decided I was gonna make me a bowl. I glued up circles cut from a Red Oak board and turned a marginally passable bowl as an experiment. I didn't have a bowl gouge. It was probably terrible. My sister loved it.

Then I bought a Jet 1642, found thicker piece of what I think was cherry, and turned my first "real" bowl:

This bowl from Eastern Red Cedar was my second. It was on this bowl I first started using cabinet scrapers instead of coarse sandpaper after discovering heat from the sandpaper caused tiny checks in the cedar.

My first hand scraper for the lathe, cut from the end of a curved cabinet scraper:

Third bowl. I started trying to take better photos.

Since this thread has bowls and mirrors, here are some made a couple of years later from wormy American Chestnut:

JKJ

Re: earliest bowls

Roger

I enjoy looking at segmented work. The only segmented bowls I have done were unintentional. Started out as conventional bowls and ended up segmented in an instant.

Amazing work, John

Ellis Walentine

You've had the knack ever since day one it seems. That segmented work is very clean and graceful, and your creativity with hand mirrors was in full bloom even then.

I wish I had some evidence of my first pieces, but I know for a fact that they weren't anywhere near your level of accomplishment. I got my first lathe -- a little Delta Rockwell 12 x 36 benchtop model -- and my first set of turning tools (Craftsman) for my 10th birthday, and I learned to turn from a couple Delta books and some old Deltagrams that had been passed down from my grandfather. It wasn't until David Ellsworth moved into our neighborhood, around 1980, that I started to turn seriously and learned to use bowl gouges. As much as I love turning, I regret that I have been too preoccupied over the years to spend more time exploring and mastering the craft. Maybe in my dotage...

Re: Amazing work, John

John C Lucas

Ellis. Much of my early turning was done with scrapers. Dull ones at that because i didnt know about raising a burr. I look back at some of my early stuff and think how did i do that. If you ha e patience and are careful with sandpaper you can do amazing thing. The biggest difference in my early work and today is the speed at wbich i can produce it. That and crisp edges crom using sharp.tools.