When developing the design of a bowl you need to take into account the proportions along with several options available for the overall bowl aesthetic. These include the foot, which can be turned within the existing seasoned blank, or as a second option, a foot turned from a separate piece of wood, saving waste when producing a pedestal bowl.
In this article I am expanding this further to look at how the internal form of the bowl may affect its initial design for an out-curve rim, or when there is a need for an undercut rim, and how to produce this with a bowl gouge and other tools, such as a scraping option if you are not confident to date with the gouge. Often simple external texture is all that is needed to add interest to a basic bowl, so here I am also introducing a few techniques to produce these, using a spindle gouge, skew and profile tools to produce beads and coves, so expanding the variation we can employ in our bowl making.
Again, I am using seasoned purchased blanks to show specific techniques for you to experiment with. Some of these techniques are not optimal – for example, when it comes to turning beads and coves I
