Ann’s Bowl

Ann’s bowl began with a conversation with a family member. She wanted a bowl that used cherry and purple heart. She had an idea of the size. I had been playing with an idea for a design, in the back of my mind. I sketched out a couple of profiles, a cross section to be used for a sweep and a sweep path. The originals appear below. There was also an idea for using thin strips of purple heart sandwiched between a lighter 1/16″ veneer.

From there, the next step was to refine the idea in the CAD environment. Here is a screen shot from a Fusion360 sketch. That is followed by a sweep of a quarter section of the bowl.

Note that in the above, the sweep radius is larger than the target half width of the bowl. A circular pattern results in the model for the full bowl, below.

Full bowl, with 4 point symmetry, rather than the rotational symmetry, characteristic of turned bowls.

From there I selected wood for the blank, cherry, purple heart in a couple of thicknesses, and maple 1/16″ veneers. Several steps in the machining process are shown below.