A pair of Laburnum Bowls

Having shown a pair of Yew bowls on the Woodworkers institute Forum I was asked how do I get the bottom flat as there appears to have been no way of holding the piece on the lathe.This is just a short tutorial to show you how the piece was made.
The piece of wood I have used here was a bit of wood that you would have thought was only good enough for firewood.It is about 7 inches long and the finished bowls are one and a half inches thick.
The first pics show how I carefully cut the wood through the centre and then removed the side branches by running it through the bandsaw against the fence.

Left click on pics to enlarge

This gave me two blanks about seven inches long by just over one and a half inches thick.These were then mounted between a disk of plywood with router mat glued to it.This what I call a pressure plate.
A spigot was then turned on both blanks ready to hold in the chuck.
A recess could have been used instead of a spigot and then left or removed.My concern with using a recess is that the outward pressure could have split the blanks.

The two blanks now have spigots ready to remount and turn the bowls.

The bowl was turned with a 3/8" bowl gouge.the groove was made with a three point tool.
Both both bowls are sanded with the Hope pro sanding tool.
The inside of the bowl is sanded with the 2" arbour and the flat area with the 3"

That is the top finished and the bowl is then put back against the pressure plate and the spigot removed leaving just a small area to be removed with a skew.

After removing the spigot the base is scraped flat with a heavy scraper then sanded with the Hope pro sander.



The ends are sanded on a sanding disk and they are then treated with a finishing oil.

A pair of nice bowls from a log that looked like it would only make firewood.

Thank you for looking.