So that piece of firewood was a sorry attempt but it was a beginning......

so it's time to start looking at upgrading our system.......

Let's first address the concept of  how to hold onto a piece of wood.........

One method is to glue a 3" disc to your blank and then screw the faceplate to the disc.

so we cut a few disc from 1" baltic birch plywood

 and glued them to the blank and let set overnight......

better make a few 'cause this takes a lot of time..........

so then you screw the faceplate to the inside of the bowl

 and turn & finish the outside of the bowl as much as you can

Once you've turned the outside, then you flip it, undo the faceplate and remount it to the sacrificial disc.

Now you're working on the inside of the bowl

After you turn and finish the inside,

you then separate the bowl and the disc with a hammer and a chisel.....

but now you have a bowl bottom that needs to be sanded and finished

...see where this is going???????

Nowhere!!!! because unbeknownst to us there was a much easier way....

but that's later in the EVOLUTION

.....so this works pretty good to this point...at least we're getting some results....

this bowl probably took about 3 hours

stay tuned for more of the EVOLUTION

Hey Billy...clean up for me will ya?

...I'm going online and then to the store......

The Continuing Evolution of Making Bowls

We are now at the stage where we need a chunk of firewood to stick onto this thing and start spinning it

You start with a log

and then you slice it in half

take a break............

make the chunks round

take another break

and make more chunks

Now we have to prep one o' these chunks so it's centered and balanced and doesn't come flying off.

First step:

Find the center....

 and mount a 3" faceplate

 (that was another investment ....did I mention the financial abyss?????)

now it's time to spin one o' these suckers........

...so we mounted it and started cutting away everything that didn't look like a bowl.

Guess what??????? you Can go too deep.....

We'll find something to use it for....

Undaunted, I'm back at the lathe......

Finally after about 4 hours, this is what I managed to scrape out

...not sure if this will sell at the Farmer's Market......

 ....but there's more later....much more

Stay tuned for more of the evolution..........