Finishing the underneath of a large yew bowl

4 Oct

In this post, I’m going to focus on finishing the underside of a large bowl, which has been mounted onto the lathe with a faceplate. Turning on a faceplate is usually straight forward during the rough turning process, but can present a few problems when a blank is put back on the lathe for the final stage of turning.

When using a chuck, there are no screw holes to fill in, making it easier to obtain a quality finish on the base of a bowl. However, when turning larger, more delicate pieces, a chuck doesn’t always have enough gripping power to hold them securely. In these situations, a faceplate must be used. I’m about to turn some very large natural edge yew bowls, which I reckon are too big for my chuck.

The photo below shows a bowl on the lathe, which has been fastened using a faceplate. This one is nearly finished and ready for the underside to be cleaned up. As you can see, the screws point directly into the bowl. The inside most be turned to allow enough thickness in the base, so as not to hit the screws or uncover the holes they have made - I've dome this once before and will hopefully never again!

The same bowl removed from the lathe - as you can see, nuts have been inserted beneath the screw heads, to reduce their length.

Here, the faceplate has been removed and the bowl is being reverse turned to clean up the underside. The screw holes are quite visible at this stage.

The screw holes have now been drilled to accept six yew plugs.

The plugs have been fitted and the base has been sanded. Although they are still visible, their symmetry makes them a feature – contrasting coloured timbers could be used to highlight this effect.

The turning process is now complete and the bowl has been removed from the lathe to be hand finished. The next stage is to remove the central spigot with a chisel and then sand off all marks for a nice smooth finish.