Making a basic bowl

This is my tutorial on making a basic bowl on the lathe. Bowls are a fantastic project to make on a lathe and they are relatively easy to make. You can get creative with the bowls and make different designs, but this is just for the basics.

What you will need:

• Faceplate and screws
• Nova Chuck
• Bowl Gouge

Step 1.) The blank
Note that you should cut off the square corners of the blank.
You need to find the centre point of the blank.
Mount the blank on the face plate using the screws provided.

Step 2.) The chuck hole
Turn the shape of the outside of your bowl.
Make a recess in the bottom of the bowl to fit the Nova chuck snugly when it is closed.
Note that you need to make the hole a slight dovetail as the jaws of the chuck flair out slightly.
Also try to get the chuck hole the same depth as the jaws, so that when you push the bowl onto the chuck it fits flat on the face of the chcuk. (This helps you to square up the bowl)
Try your best to complete the outside of the bowl completely as you will not be able to access it easily once you remove the faceplate.

Step 3.) The bowl
Now you can remove the faceplate and mount the bowl on the nova chuck.
Make sure that the chuck holds the bowl tightly and it is square.
Turn out the inside of the bowl making sure that you don't make the sides even and that you don't go all the way through.

Step 4.) Finishing
While the bowl is still on the lathe you can sand it. Start with rough grit sandpaper and move all the way down through the various grits.
I normally start at 60 grit, then 80 grit, 100 grit and finally water paper.

Varnishing
Once you have sanded the bowl you can varnish the bowl.
I start with 1 liberal coat of Woodoc 10.
Once the first coat has dried give it a light sand with steel wool.
Put on another coat and steel wool again once it has dried
finally put on the last coat and leave to dry.

I hope this will be helpful. Please give me some feedback.