Lots of hardwoods available  1. Generally this is where I begin. Many hardwoods are received here. If you are a town resident you can have as much as you want whenever you want. Just great for me!  Many people also contact me to offer wood.	A typical log from the trunk of a locust tree 2. This a locust wood log. This is probably a honey locust because the wood has a distinct yellow color throughout. The diameter is approximately 12"	locust log cut longitudinally with chain saw 3.  I cut the locust log lengthwise exposing the center heartwood. From these two halves, a minimum of two bowls could be made.
Preparing the 'blank' on the bandsaw 4. With the wood being 'green', i.e. wet, the best way to rough out a bowl, the bandsaw blade needs to have as few 'teeth/inch' as possible because the blade can bind up in the wood. Usually there isn't too much difficulty if the speed is set high enough.	I attach a steel faceplate to one of the surfaces of the 'blank' 5. I use a Shopsmith lathe motor for the bandsaw and a 2nd Shopsmith motor for the lathe portion. I attach a steel faceplate to a selected side of the blank and attach it to the belt driven shaft off of the motor.	This is box elder wood using the same methods 6. With the blank mounted on the lathe using the faceplate attached to the motor shaft, you are ready to turn the outside of the bowl using various sharp tools.  Please note, it is a different blank than the previous photo(#5) but it is still a blank ready for more explanation.
This 16" blank is the largest diameter I can turn on this machine. 7. Having the blank 'nearly' balanced before you attach it to the lathe is very helpful.  If it isn't, you will discover the laws of physics with respect to the irrational behavior of the machine!  It will vibrate terribly and be both dangerous to yourself as well as your lathe setup.  In this photo, this type of arrangement where the 'sides' are nearly identical will not cause significant vibration and when your tool is used, will calm the vibration.  As I tell people, the first 10 minutes can be really scary, sometimes.	Box Elder has these great looking red streaks in it, sometimes. 8. The outside portion of a bowl is turned first.  You also prepare the base of the bowl and how you will attach a chuck so that when you are finished with the outside you can turn it around and mount the chuck on the lathe shaft.   My Shopsmith works very well for making bowls.  It has a variable speed, an extension quill and a ruggedness that is necessary when turning wood.	It is beginning to look like a wood bowl. 9. While turning the outside, you are also 'balancing' it so that it turns more evenly.  Wait till you are fully finished turning the outside before you either make an external tenon or as I prefer to do on larger bowls, an internal tenon.  This will allow the bowl to turn more evenly when you reverse it to remove the inside.
Chuck attached, ready for turning around. The horizotal steel piece is the tool rest.. 10. The chuck has been attached, tightened with a special hex wrench, and is ready to be checked for eveness by turning the motor on briefly. Typically, after I turn the bowl around, I have to re-turn the outside portion to true it up to a balanced diameter.  The tool rest is an essential element of a lathe in that it is where you place your hand tool to guide and remove the wood.	The 'bowl' has been reversed and ready for turning out the wood on the inside. 11.  For this photo, I have kept the faceplate on so that you can see that it has been turned around and is ready for turning out the wood on the inside.  Of cours you remove this faceplate before you begin.	Here you see the chuck attached to the internal tenon that I fashioned. 12. This photo allows me to explain the red streaks through the box elder wood.  According to internet references, Box Elder is in the same taxonomic family as Maple. So, this particular piece of box elder is 'spalted', like in spalted maple, which has similar streaks throughout the wood, sometimes.  As the tree dies or as a result of the infestation, a beetle, Ambrosia species, invades the wood, bringing a fungus with it. The fungus disseminates into the wood and initiates the breakdown of the wood. Now in both maple and box elder, the species that causes the streaks is the Fusarium fungus.  In maple it produces a brown/grey stain initially and in the species that invades box elder, it produces a red stain.  The stains are permanent if you work with the wood at this stage.  Further decay while inside the tree results in the dissolution of the stain in both maple and box elder.
Ready to turn out the inside. 13. Here is a spalted box elder ready to be formed into a bowl. I have re-balanced the bowl by re-turning the outside. If you do a good job initially, than it will not require a lot of re-turning to true up the bowl with respect to balancing it.	Partially turned. The tool rest has been moved out of the way for the photograph. 14. Oftentimes, when turning a spalted type bowl, you remove some beautiful streaks that you wish you could leave but the depth of the bowl is insufficient and to add insult to injury most of the spalting is in the 'middle or inside portion of the bowl' and not on the outside or what is really the sapwood portion of the wood. Hope this makes some sense  to you.  Bottom line is: I remove much of the spalting/streaks to be able to make it a bowl.	Beginning to looklike a nice bowl 15. There are some nice streaking in this bowl.  Ought to look and feel very nice when it is dried, sanded and sprayed with a waterproof finish.
Finished turning! 16. The time it takes to 'turn' a bowl varies with the size, type of wood, artistic feel you want to convey to the item and how well balanced it was to begin with.  Most of the time I select sections off of a tree that are irregular in shape, e.g. crotches, cut limb areas that have been overgrown by the tree etc., this makes it more time consuming but the rewards are a more unique bowl.  This bowl may have taken me about 5 hours to turn from the time outside with my chain saw to the final cut to give it this appearance.	Ready for a natural dry process of about 5 months. 17.  I really do not care to know how long it takes me to complete a bowl.  If I did, I probably would not want to sell any and no one would buy any because they would be too expensive.  I do this for the enjoyment and pleasure of working with wood.  I never charge for my the time it takes me and I am never in a hurry.  Patience is necessary in this art.  I normally say that it takes me 6 months to make a bowl.  I monitor them as they dry, moving them from one location to another.  I then sand them using 13 different grit sizes.  I then rub on pure Tung Oil onto the freshly sanded surface.  Sometimes I resand the oiled surface lightly and re-oil.  After drying I prepare to spray the surface.  This may take me a week to complete.  And finally I sand the sprayed surface with some special techniques to give it a ultra smooth feel.  To me a bowl has a feel as well as a visual affect to the individual.   I do have to have some secrets to making my bowls so smooth.