Power Carve a Bowl

If, you're ever looking for me and can't find me, there's a good chance I'm somewhere doing this. I have really fallen in love with this idea of taking blanks of wood. Like the box elder I've got here and using the Arbor tech tools in order to turn them into something. And that something could be a carving, it can be a platter, it could be a bowl. We'll talk more about just what this tool can do.

And you're going to see a bunch of that in a second. But there's a bunch of stuff about this that's really neat. It's very organic. So instead of running this through a lay there a table saw or a band saw, we're just literally going to take this tool and shape this block just based on what we see as we go here. The shroud that's on here now, the leveling shroud, makes it really easy to do just that to do leveling.

So the way to think about this is it's like an Outrigger. And if you have ever used a frame on a belt sander, it's kind of a similar concept where it provides some float around the cutter. I can turn this dial and I can change how much this the leveling shroud projects past, or as even with or as short of the cutter. So what that allows me to do is control my depth to cut and that's as I'm working along the surface in order to level it out, that's what helps make that so easy is it's giving me that guidance, it's given me that Outrigger, so that I don't inadvertently dig in. So think about if I was ready to do a big live edge slab that was way too big to go through my planer.

This would provide me with that opportunity to take the high spots off and then continue to level that slab out. The other thing I really like about it is that doing this kind of work is inherently dusty and dirty. And the dust collection on this is really good. So here's sequence of events: With this shroud on, I'm using a turbo plane and I'm going to continue leveling this out to get this flat. Then eventually we're going to change routes here, continue with the turbo plane, do some hollowing on the front face do some shaping on the back face and you'll see all that happen.

And then as we go through, we can change to a sanding head and actually get this to a point where our machining marks are sanded out. Then it's looking better and better as we go. So let's do a little bit more leveling on this so you can see how that works and then we'll get the shrouds changed over. But what I'm doing here, which is next step I'm going to start to concave this, that's as far as I need to go. So if we needed to continue to level out, to get that a little flatter, we could do so.

But again for this project, hollowing is next. What I'm going to do is change routes. So that with the next shot, I'll be able to reach in. I'll be able to actually start the hiring process. And then we'll come back and have a look at how that goes.

You can see how this is going to go. I'm going to take away everything that doesn't look like a box elder bowl. With this shroud on, now what we've done is eliminated that Outrigger aspect that the leveling pad had. So what that lets me do is get in like this with the turbo plane and really start taking material out. One of the things that's cool is nice surface finish off of this because we're cutting wood.

We're not scraping wood. This isn't a Burr, it's a cutter. So nice surface finish on our material. But with that being said, it does cut pretty aggressively. And again, with our dust collection on here, we're not throwing junk all over the room here.

I'm going to keep going on this and we'll get.. I've got another bowl set up so that we can look at that one as well. And when we get to the sanding step. But I want to show you more of the hallowing, and then also want to flip this over and have a chance to look at creating the outside shape on these two. You can see where I'm going here.

We're going to just keep hollowing, hollowing, hollowing, to create a big concave here. And I really love the look of this box elder. It's got these beautiful stripes in it. This particular piece was a piece of crotch. And you can really see we're going to have some amazing grain right there.

So now what I want to do is show you a little bit of the outside shaping. The other thing to keep in mind with the turbo plane is that it's a device that you can also use with a template with a pattern. So we're not doing that here because this is very, very freeform. But if you were working on a chair seat and you'd be doing something similar to what I was just doing there. You could actually create a template and the edge of the turbo plane will follow that pattern.

So that you can get all of your seat dishes to come out the same. So now in the normal sequence of events, I would finish that inside. Then I would come and start here on the outside. But I just want to show you basically concave versus convex and spend a little bit of time here. Too much fun.

I am going to swipe here. I'm going to leave that same shroud on. But I'm going to go to the sanding desk. And I've got a piece of box out that's a lot further along. So we can look at the sanding operation and how that works here.

This bull is further along, and this side is fresh off of the work with the turbo plane. So you can see what was going on there. And then with a swipe to sandpaper, we can very easily knock that down. I'm running 60 grit right now. And what I would do is just like normally in woodworking take that through a progression of grits.

I'll show you where I'm at on the other side in just a second. But the other thing I like about this particular tool, is that it's got variable speed. So when we get to a sanding step like this, one of the things that variable speed is going to do, is help me have really good control over how much I'm taking off. So maybe I want to have an aggressive paper but slow down the RPM a little bit. So that I'm not taking the material off quite as quickly.

Probably not at this stage, but as I get further along kind of like where we're at on the inside. So that when I get to this step, if I want to be a little bit more conservative with material removal I can. On the inside of this, I've sanded that to 20. And let's have a look. This is another piece of that box elder crotch.

This is water. So treating the water the way this is going to look when it's wet under finish. Where you can really see how it's popping the crotch it's accentuating the color. This is one of the things I really, really like about this, is we can grab these kind of oddball chunks of wood, and make really neat pieces in this free form style of whatever your brain and your hands want to put together. That's what we get.

Neat system and really fun to use. And I honestly, I can't wait to do more than that.