"Turned" Bowl

[bbrozo]

Not to ignore the 'Botters, I posted these pics. on the Vectric forum and thought you folks might enjoy seeing them as well.

This is a bowl I did last month. I used Aspire and really "pushed the envelope" so to speak in several respects. The bowl is approximately 2.625" deep and from the base of the foot to the bowl rim is 3.25". The diameter is 15". The blank is maple face glued in 1.75" strips to create a butcher block blank. Normally, I would have turned this on my lathe but it only has a 12" dia. capacity and my wife wanted a 15" bowl. After some thought, I determined that it should be possible on my Shopbot.

It is machined from both sides. I carved the bowl top first and the last step was to drill two 1/4" holes in the blank on either side of the bowl (0,0 was the center of the blank). Then, I removed the blank from the table and, as the first step to carving the bowl bottom, drilled two 1/4" holes in the spoilboard in the exact same location. That way, I could put two 1/4 dowels in the top of the blank, flip it and line it up perfectly to begin carving the bottom. It's a little scary at first since I was carving blind but as long as my calculations were right, the bowl would be about 1/4" thick when finished. There are also "dog ears" on the blank for bolting the blank to the table.

It took approximately a dozen hours to carve.

Bill

P.S. - I'll post better pics. when I get home.

[myxpykalix]

Thats real neat and a good example of two sided carving. I'd be interested in seeing pics of the way you registered it. Good job!

[Brady Watson]

Fantastic!

Did you wind up keeping it for yourself, was it for a customer or did you 'gift' it away?

-B

[steve]

fabulous bowl Bill

[bbrozo]

I made it for my wife. She wanted a 15" bowl but I could only do a max. of 12" diameter on my lathe and then it occurred to me that this should be possible on the Shopbot and then it took on a life of it's own. Now that I've shown it's possible there are really so many other possibilities (i.e. - different designs for the base, other shapes besides circular - I could go on and on).

Thank you all for the kind words. I've attached better pictures. I don't really have a good picture showing how I registered the blank for 2-sided machining though but I descibed it in my initial post.

Enjoy...
Bill

[Rick W]

Nice job Bill!!

Gonna have to try that myself.
Did you make the butterfly holder in the backgroung??
Also, I see an oppertunity for a lithopane in the background as well.

Thanks for the inspiration!!

Rik

Looks like we have the same bot.

[bbrozo]

Thanks Rick. No, I didn't make the butterfly holder in the background. That's one thing I haven't tried yet is lithophanes.

I should post some of the other work I've done I guess (shade garden fence, picture frames and, of course, signs for family and friends).

I've got a Shopbot 48x48 PRS standard. I love it!! Once you get past the fear of making mistakes, it can really do some amazing things and is only limited by your imagination.

Bill

[garyr6]

Nice,Nice,Nice. Got to try that.....Bowls gave up the lathe cause of my back but this I can do.

[pyrodenis]

Very Nice Bill!
I'm just about finished running the bottom of my bowl.
A question for your, or anyone:
Is there a strategy for inverting my model, that doesn't require the likes of Rhino
My challenge is that I'm using the shape of a pine burr, that has 3 sections. So, my model in Aspire is unusually shaped, and I want to use that as a start to create the convex side; thick enough, but not too heavy. Also, I want to soften the two transitions between the sections, so that I don't have hard lines.
Being new to aspire, I'm wondering how to invert my convex model, so that I can design the concave cutout.
One thought, is to export it and invert the grayscale in photoshop. But, I'm worried about distortion.
Help anyone?
Again, nice bowl!

[Joe Porter]

Denis, I think that after you model the shape of your bowl from either side, you can go to the measure tool and get a cross section of the model and use that to figure the other side.....joe