Segmented Bowl – # 13 Finishing & Wood Leftovers

The finish application process starts by applying a coat to the inside of the bowl and top half of the outside.  The second day after a light sanding with 320 sandpaper the bottom half of the inside is given a second coat, the bowl inverted and the bottom half of the bowl’s outside including the bowl’s base is given its first coat.  I didn’t do the whole inside because the top rim needs to be finish free so the bowl can be inverted.  The third day the tailstock adapter gets clamped to hold it upright and the bowl gets mounted onto it.  The top half of the inside gets its second coat then all the outside has its second coat applied. 

After letting the finish cure for a couple of days the bowl is lightly sanded inside and out with 600 grit sandpaper to remove any dust nibs and reduce the gloss just a little.  Last is to turn the bowl over and give the base one more coat for additional protection.  Both the oak and maple should remain pretty constant but the color of the cherry will darken and get richer over time increasing the contrast between it and the other woods.  The cherry and walnut bowl from the first post below shows what about 4 ½ years of aging will do since now the cherry is almost as dark as the walnut.  This change should make the thin oak/cherry bands above and below the feature band stand out more.  At least that’s the plan, time will tell.

Anyway, the photo below shows the completed bowl as it sets today without the cherry’s final color.  I am really happy with how it turned out.  All the measuring and careful planning came together with all the joints lining up and the feature rings identical.

Once done with the bowl I had a stack of leftovers from the feature rings that I really didn’t want to just throw away.  For the large piece at the top right, I am looking at making it into a clipboard.  The group of pieces below that are individual feature segment blanks or flawed finished segments that ended up as rejects.  This group of pieces will be set aside until I come across a use for them.  That leaves the smaller pieces up against the framing square.  They are cutoffs when I was making early sizing cuts for the main feature rings and almost got thrown in the kindling bucket before I got to thinking that they might be useful for pen turning blanks or making refrigerator magnet blanks.

Since these pieces were sizing cutoffs, they are not the same length or thickness but are almost the same in width.  This means before they can be assembled into usable blanks the length and thickness need to match.  The first step in doing that is to get the cherry/maple joint the same distance from one end.  That’s done using the chop saw with a reference mark made on a temporary base as shown below.  Once the point where the maple/cherry joint is the same distance from one end a stop can be set on the chop saw so the cherry/maple joint the opposite end matches the distance already cut.  It will also make the pieces all the same length.

The next step is to get all the pieces the same thickness.  Since they are too small for me to comfortably run through the table saw and too short to individually run through the thickness sander another method is needed.  My solution is to build a jig that will hold the short pieces together as a single unit and the run them through the thickness sander.  Here that’s in progress with clamps holding the frames and pieces tight together so the screws can be run in to hold them in position.  In the top photo below the center group is clamped and ready for the screws to be run in.  The bottom photo shows the last group all screwed in place with the clamps ready to be removed.

Here the top photo shows the completed assembly ready to run through the thickness sander.  The bottom photo gives a better view of the different thicknesses of the individual pieces to be flattened.  Also, as you can see all the top screws are recessed or countersunk.  The ones on the side are recessed so there is enough of the screw extending through the piece of plywood to get enough penetration into the base to hold the plywood in place.  The top countersink is to keep the screws below the finished sanded level so I don’t try and sand the screwheads off.

Once the assembly has been run through the thickness sander a few times all the pieces are the same thickness.

Last is to sort through the pieces and discard any that had flaws.  With that done I ended up with twelve matched pieces to be set aside until they are needed for a project.

There are also nearly a hundred small wedge pieces left over from cutting the 15-degree angle on the segments ends.  Each of them are a little over 1” long and ¼” thick that probably should have been tossed but got set aside.  In looking at them I think they could be combined to make some interesting refrigerator magnets.  The photo below shows the individual pieces, the intermediate glued up layers and the finished glued up blank for a magnet.

There are two ways of mounting the blank on the lathe.  First, is with the triangle assembly face aligned with the lathe’s centerline as shown here.  With it this way once mounted in the lathe all you can see are the thin edges of the triangles or a solid face.

When turned here are two views of what the piece looks like.  On the top you can see the triangular shaped pieces. 

The other way to mount the blank in the lathe is with the triangle assembly face 90 degrees to the lathe’s center line.  The blank is glued up the same as the first example with the upper and lower blocks rotated 90 degrees to each other.  The only difference is that it’s just mounted in the lathe using a different axis.  In the right photo the triangles are in visible and vertical while the other side has them running from left to right.

When turned it gives a whole different look.  These four photos show the piece after it’s turned round and are taken a quarter rotation apart. 

When turned this is what the piece looks like without a lacquer finish and you can see that it looks really different from the first setup. 

Once lacquered rare earth magnets are added to a recessed hole in the base and they are ready to use.  Below are the completed magnets.

I started this project wanting to do something a little more complex than the earlier segmented bowls I had done and this one certainly fit the bill.  When starting out I knew that getting all the angled pieces in the main feature layers to match identically was going to be a challenge and it was.  That said it was totally worth it.  As to making another bowl of similar complexity... ask me in a year or so.