Turning a bowl without a chuck

Recently someone asked how to turn without a chuck. One way is to turn it on a face plate, either with or without a face plate. Some time ago I read a forum post that described turning a bowl with no chuck or face plate. I took that idea and figured out that yes indeed you can turn a bowl with out a mechanical chuck. I'll explain more as we go through the process.

Here you see a log section mounted on the lathe ready to start turning. BTW, this is my mini lathe, the only one I had at the time.





The turning process has begun. The end toward the right will be the bottom of the bowl while the left end will be, you guessed it, the top. Still some flat areas so there's more turning to do here.






Lookie here, it looks like maybe two bowls are starting to develop here. I honestly don't remember what was going on, but I'm getting this blank turned down to have a stem on both ends.

Also, do yo see the dark lines in the wood? That's spalting and it gives so much character to the wood. I wish I still had this bowl. For some reason I'm thinking it wound up being a gift.


Now you can see that I've turned the stem on the bottom and left it rather hefty. It needs to be so that I can hollow the inside of the bowl and also to take the riggors of driving the blank round and round.

At this point, with the outside of the bowl pretty well shaped, I've turned the blank around so that I can start the work on the inside. The tenon in the center will remain until the very end of the turning process. You'll see it go away later because if I were to turn it away now there would be nothing to hold it against the drive spur. Also there would be nothing to hold it up in line. The wood must spin on a constant axis in order to be turned round.


The hollowing process has gone well to this point. Notice the stem on the inside of the bowl. This is something to work around and with as you do the rest of the hollowing. There are some things different about this type of turning, but it was an exorcise for me. As you can see, it does work, at least to this point. Looks to me like I've got some sanding ahead.



You can see here that I have started to thin down the inner stem. I hope that the sanding was already done. At least it should have been done to 220 or so. Anyway, I suggest that the inner and outer stems be thinned at the same time. Thin a bit on the inside, then the outside, a little more on the inside, a little more on the outside, etc.


Once the inner stem has been removed, I suggest that you use a 2" sanding mandrel mounted in a drill to sand out the inside bottom of the bowl. Once the sanding process is done you can move on to finishing the bottom of the bowl. Now the fun begins.

You have some options now. I've alluded to one way of doing this, that is to thin the outer stem as you thin the inner. Then you can remove that outer stem with a carving knife and sand down the remaining nub. That's how you can do it with no chuck what so ever. The next picture will begin to explain the way I did it and how I might suggest you complete yours as well.

The Donut Chuck is a wonderful piece of equipment to have. It works great for these small pieces that really need to be reversed. The top of this bowl is toward the left and the bottom, outer stem is toward the right. Once mounted in the donut chuck you can turn down that outer stem to your hearts content. In this case it could be tapered on the sides and flattened on the bottom to create a pedistal or turned all the way down to form a small foot or even a rounded bottom. Your main concern is to create a bottom for your bowl that will complement the design of the piece and provide you a finished piece that will draw folks to look at your work a second or third time. The other idea to deal with is to remove all evidence of how you mounted the piece. With this method you'll have no screw holes, spur marks, or live center marks. All you'll end up with is the design that you and God combined together to share with your customers.

I'm sorry I don't have a picture of the completed piece. I do, however, have a pic of a completed spalted Buckeye bowl that I turned using this exact process. If you don't mind, I'll post it for your viewing pleasure. Enjoy.