How I Made It
Project 06-041
Mixed Media Bowl Number One
Up-dated 04/16/06
This project was done for the American
Association of Woodturners Spring 2006 Contest (www.woodturner.org). The requirement for the contest was a bowl
between 6 and 16 inches in diameter.
That made it pretty open so I decided to make something unusual. I had wanted to make something combining wood
and leather for some time and this seemed like the perfect opportunity. Back in the ‘80s I made a lot of things out
of leather and I used various lacing techniques on some of the pieces. This piece would be maple and leather lace
and the lacing style would be the “round braid” or “Mexican basket weave”.
I don’t want to start a controversy here but I wonder sometimes about some of the very beautiful pieces displayed at the Instant Galleries or in magazines or on websites. There are many of those pieces that are more carved then turned. Actually, I’ve seen pieces that I can’t figure out if it ever was on a lathe or not. If 5 or 10 percent of the time is spent in turning and the rest in carving, then is the piece carved or turned? Well, I had the same dilemma here. Although I spent a great amount of time sanding (which is part of the finishing) it finally turned out that I spent over 4 hours lacing the thing. If I include drilling the holes, the time for the lacing would be a little over 5 hours. The wood turned out to have a few soft spots that required a horrendous amount of sanding, but if I did not have that problem, the bowl would have taken only about 2 hours or so to turn and finish (excluding drying times etc.). So what is this piece; a laced bowl or a bowl with lacing?
I started out with a block of maple about 9” by 8 1/8” and 5 inches thick. I bought this piece of wood last year from e-bay and thought I got a good deal. Actually, I didn’t. I don’t think I’m going to buy wood again that I don’t actually touch before buying. I marked the wood where to cut.
I put a fence on my band saw and cut off that extra inch. I think I’ll keep that piece for something.
I cut out the circle on the band saw. I drilled a hole in the center for the screw chuck and mounted the piece of wood to the lathe. So far everything is about as normal as it gets for a bowl.
I shaped the out side of the bowl and then took it off the screw chuck and put the tennon in the chuck to turn the inside. I like to finish the outside of the bowl now but sometimes I might have to do some fine turning if it needs it. This piece had several “flaws” in the wood. One of the worst flaws was a rather large soft spot that was mostly end grain. This soft spot took a lot of sanding later in the finishing process.
I hollowed out the inside of the bowl and finished it. I sanded the whole bowl to 400 grit and applied 3 coats of thinned sanding sealer and let it dry over night. I’m didn’t take any photos (besides, you would be bored to tears anyway) but I had to re-sand from 60 grit up to 400 again. That soft spot was about 2 ½ by 2 ½ and was quite noticeable. I power sanded and hand sanded and got pretty tired of sanding!!! I reapplied a few more coats of thinned sanding sealer and let it dry over night. I waxed the bowl with Orange Wax and hand buffed it.
The Lacing
Previous to this project, I made a test bowl and laced it. This tested the hole making jig that I would have to make and the placement and dimensions of the holes and my lacing technique. I needed to determine how far apart to make the holes and how far from the edge they would have to be. I needed to determine the diameter of the hole also. The lace I intended to us was 1/8” wide and the flat needle that I would us was also 1/8” at its widest. Round braid lacing requires 9 times more lace then the length of the project so I would have to splice the lace several times. This really is not a big deal. If you want to try lacing yourself, go to Tandy Leather and buy the lace and needles and the book “Lacing and Stitching for Leathercraft”. My test proved an important thing that I had forgotten from my leathercraft days – lacing is tedious!
I used a pyramid point tool to make a groove on the outside and inside 3/32” from the edge.
I put blue masking tape around the edge and marked off 3/32” spacings for the holes. Right at the end, I had to adjust a little to get the spacing close. I used the jig shown in the photos to drill the holes. I taped my Dremel tool to a thin piece of wood so that the drill would be parallel to the piece of wood. The table that the Dremel tool would ride on is just a piece of MDF with a piece of dowel glued in it. I put it in the holder in the banjo and as far as I am concerned the table is parallel to the lathe bed. I clamped a piece of wood on either side of the Dremel tool assembly so that the assembly could move smoothly. I used a 1/8” drill bit and I centered it to the point on a spur center. I was going to have to drill a lot of holes so the “indexing” was by eyeball. I guess I got pretty close.
When all the holes were drilled I had 105 holes. I wasn’t concerned by the groove because the lacing would cover that and it would look like it was part of the lacing anyway. I finished up the bottom of the bowl in the usual manner.
I made a cup of iced tea and collected all the lacing stuff and got comfortable and started lacing. Notice that the instructions are right there and I did use them a lot. Four hours later and I was done. That was a long and tedious job. The lace will go over and under the strand 4 times for each “stitch”. The lace will pass through each hole twice. For those of you that want to try this method and are following the book’s instructions you will notice that the starting point of the lace is supposed to be between the 2 pieces of leather. This is kind of hard to do on a solid piece of wood so after a lot of experimenting on the test piece I figured out how to do it. Drill one perpendicular hole at your starting point into the edge of the bowl. This will allow you to properly lace the project.
This is what the lacing looks like.
The bowl looks pretty good. I think I’ll try this again!
Thank you for looking at this page.
PT
