Day 19: Elbow pain, blisters and bowls

After one day spent processing a sycamore log towards a bowl shape, I have learnt that bowl carving is hard physical work.  I’m exhausted, I have several blisters forming on my right hand, my right forearm is aching, and both my wrist and elbow are rather sore.  But I’m excited!… I’ve got a bowl that has a lovely shaped bottom.  Just the inside to finish now!

Splitting the log

No surprises that the starting point for a bowl is a piece of wood.  We used some sycamore today.  Useful wood identification tip… “sycamore looks at you”.  This was felled in the winter and has been lying in the woods since then.  We split the log to remove the slice of wood around the pith.

Levelling the top and bottom

Although the wood split relatively cleanly, we still needed to level it up.  This split surface will end up being the rim of the bowl.  We used an axe to remove any wind, or twist in the wood, and then we used a plane to get a smooth finish.  As well as making a better rim, it’s also easier to draw out the bowl shape on a clean surface.

We made the bottom flat with the axe too.  It isn’t so essential that this is planed smooth, but it is useful if it’s flat enough to sit without wobbling.

Then it was time to draw a bowl shape.  We drew a centre-line, and took the bowl shape right up to the end grain.  The end grain is the hardest stuff to remove with an axe or a knife, so the intention is to remove as little of it as possible.

Outside-in, or inside-out

Both the outside and the inside of the bowl need shaping.  At the moment, there doesn’t seem to be any clear decision-making process to determine whether to start on the inside or the outside.  Today I started carving the outside first.

The main tool for carving the outside is the axe.  This is tough work.  First of all I chipped away at a 45 degree angle (or so) from one end of the bowl.  Then I wished I hadn’t!  The angle I carved down at made the bottom of the bowl much more sloped that I’d intended.  Green woodworking design (or redesign) is often led by tools, or grain, or mishaps in this way.

By this time, several blisters were forming, and my elbow required frequent rests and stretches.  Maurice used the chainsaw to help shape the other side of the bowl.  Axe work tidied it up, and then a spoke shave gave a smoother finish.

The last job before hollowing was to plane the base of the bowl to give a smooth level surface.

Hollowing the inside

If the inside is hollowed before the outside, the bowl can be held on a bowl bench.  A bowl bench looks like a normal bench, but it’s covered in holes, and the legs at each end look like they’ve been fitted by the worst green woodworker.  My suggestion, earlier in the course, that the comfort of the bench could be much improved by sawing off the protruding ends was met with horror by Maurice.  Cutting off the dogs?!

So, today I discovered the point of the dogs.  Or, that is, the useful point, rather than the painful ones when you sit on them.  The bowl butts against the dogs, and at the other end, pegs and wedges fix the bowl in place.

With the bowl firmly held, a gouge and mallet or an adze is used to hollow out the bowl.  The big risk here is that the wood can split along the grain and remove the rim.  To stop this happening, start by using the gouge or adze in an arc around the end radii at either end of the bowl.  These form stop cuts that prevent the grain from splitting out.

An additional stop cut along the centre-line of the bowl with a chainsaw speeds up the hollowing.  Apparently the chips will then “fly out”. However, by this point in the day, nothing was going to “fly out” for me.

On the positive side though, the bowl is already in much better shape than me… Time to leave it for a rest in some shavings, and time for me to try to rest and recover enough for the remainder of the hollowing tomorrow.