Small soap bowl turned from ash

 I have turned a couple of soap bowls using ash greenwood and also carved some rectangular ones. I thought I'd just remind myself of the process as we needed a couple more bowls.

I started with a log of spalted ash and sawed, chopped and chiselled a blank as usual. The wood was hard and not the easiest to turn but it all adds to the experience. I adjusted the arm rest on the lathe to get the tool in a good position and also released some tension on the bungy cord (it was taut because the previous job had been a large hefty bowl which needed a bit of muscle to turn). I attached a tenon mandrel and started turning the outside of the bowl and base including a plinth and concave shape as shown below.

Roughing out the outside with TU tool. The ash is spalted but hard.

I did the outside with a slight bulge around the centre.

Turning the centre was challenging because of the lack of space between the core and the inside. The photo shows the use of the cranked tool (double sided UP tool).

 

The inside of the bowl was  turned with the TD tool near the centre and then the TU to shape the rim and inside. I had the usual problem with the core but the cranked tool (as shown above) helped excavate the bowl. This was difficult because of the space between the core and inside of the bowl. I think I will make a smaller diameter mandrel for the small bowls as this will make the excavation easier.

When the inside was deep enough I decided to chisel the core out and release the mandrel. I guess this would be frowned on by traditionalists but to me it made sense not to risk damaging the bowl at this stage. This proved to be easy taking care to work across the grain when close to the base.

The soap bowl after finishing ( 8 cm diameter and 5 cm depth.)

After this I turned another soap bowl with another section of the spalted ash log but made this a wider diameter and shallow. I used the same tenon mandrel. This turned easier than the small deeper bowl shown above because access to the inside of the bowl was easier although removing the core was still very difficult and I need more practice with reducing the core to a small enough diameter to allow an easy break across the grain.

Larger diameter ash soap bowl (about 13 cm diameter and 3.5 cm depth)