Segmented Bowl – # 3 Starting on Making Feature Ring Blank

With a plan in place for making the angled pieces a stop block is set on the chop saw for consistent width pieces and the first maple blank is cut.  For now, I am only going to cut one blank and take it through all the operations to make sure everything works as planned.

When I went to center the bandsaw blade between the two blanks, I ran into an unexpected snag.  Because of the bandsaw’s angled table, I couldn’t move the fence over far enough as the blade hit the bottom edge of the fence.  In the drawing below that area is circled in red. 

Since cutting a notch in the fence is not a good idea, I made a temporary spacer with a notch cut in it for the blade.  Below the left photo shows what that looks like clamped to the bandsaw’s fence.  The right photo shows the maple blank backed up to the blade before cutting.

Running the blank through the bandsaw using a light steady touch while making the cut gives me two nearly identical pieces shown in the photo below.  Pushing too hard on the blank while making the cut can cause the blade to deform resulting in a cut that is not straight. 

Next is to take each of the angled pieces and cut them to their final width with the table saw.  Not much needs to be cut off but it is necessary to make them all identical.

The thickness sander is then used to bring the angled piece down to the desired thickness.  Once that’s done the pieces are put in the angle jig and the sander is used to smooth the bandsawn surface out until the edge (red arrow) is very thin.

After cutting and sanding the maple pieces I started on the cherry parts.  As mentioned in the previous post because the cherry boards are not as wide as the maple, I need to edge glue a piece onto it to equal the maple’s width and at the same time make sure that joint lines up with where the segments will get cut apart.  Here is the first cherry glue-up.  It’s wider than needed so some will get trimmed off the top and bottom getting rid of the light-colored sap wood.  When done it will be the same size as the maple.

Once the glue cures the blanks are ripped to width.  Next the ends with the sapwood are trimmed off using the chop saw.  Since there will be six individual segments cut from the blank measurements for trimming are made from the center joint where the two boards were glued together.  That joint has the red arrow pointing to it. 

Because the cherry blanks are a little thinner than the maple ones the center line for ripping the angle pieces are not the same so the bandsaw fence had to be adjusted.  Here’s the fence reset so it’s centered between the two angled pieces.

Here are nearly all of the first group of angled pieces after being cut on the bandsaw.  They are very close in size and the ripping of the blanks went better than expected. 

The next step is to take the rough sawn pieces through the same process as described above with the first two maple pieces.  Cutting them to width on the tablesaw, sanding to thickness then using the angle jig smooth and flatten the bandsawn angled face.  Below are the finished sets of pieces ready to be glued up.

The photos below shows the sanded pieces dry stacked up using two different spacings.  One of which will be the way the bowl will look when assembled and glued together.  I just have not decided which yet.

My next step is to glue all pairs of angled pieces together using the jig made earlier.  First, one piece gets set in the jig then glue is applied to the other angled face and combed using a silicone glue spreader.  Note that the glue is applied to only the angled face.

Last is to clamp the caul in place to spread the clamping force.  That’s necessary to distribute the clamping force to make sure the thin edge of the angled piece is held in place while the glue cures.  Because of the glue on the angled pieces when the clamps are tightened, they want to slide apart but the long reference rails keep that from happening.

After the glue cures the laminated blank is removed from the jig and any glue nibs are removed from the joint where the cherry and maple meet.  The top photo shows the blank clamped in place and the scraper used to remove the glue.  The bottom photo is a closer view of the joint.  There is not a lot of glue to remove but it needs to be taken off to get a flat reference face for the next step.

Sanding starts with flattening the top and bottom of the blanks getting rid of the little lip.  That’s followed by bringing the blanks down to their final thickness.  This requires a quite a bit of care since the same amount of material needs to be taken off the top and bottom so the distance from the maple/cherry joint is the same on the top and bottom.  When finished the top photo shows what all the blanks look like and the bottom photo shows the front and back of the blanks along with an end view. 

Next Up – Cutting Individual Segment Blanks, Making Plywood