The last three days I have been teaching a bowl carving course, these are the bowls we made
Here is the early stage Steve adzing out the hollow

 everyone made two bowls, the first is a standard design just to get to grips with the tools and techniques.

Once that is done we start again with a larger piece of wood and carve a second bowl with everyone choosing different pieces and making different shaped bowls. This is my daughter Jojo who wanted to make a duck bowl, mine is copied from one I saw years ago at Saterglantan the national folk craft school in Sweden.

 Martin made an alder bowl, it is a nice wood to work but often has hidden dead knots, Martin found one but it was solid wood and seemed to be OK, I really like the shape pf his bowl.

 After adzing we follow up with the gouge

When used well the gouge quickly pares off lots of crisp shavings, a joy to use.

 Once the inside is completely finished and smooth we take to the axe again, this is a realy good strong stance with the right leg back safe out of the way if the axe were to glance off and swing through and the wide stance gives lots of stability

 Michael makes traditional early instruments and was interested to learn more about the green woodworking techniques that would have been used to make instruments centuries ago.

 Jojo using the Hans Karlsson dog leg gouge, again a good wide stance with the weight of the body pushing the tool.

 The duck bowl hollowed out and the model alongside.

 carving the head with the axe.

 Pete making a lovely big dough trough.

Then on to fine finishing with the knife.

 and the finished bowls

Author Robin Wood

Comments (4)

Comments are closed.