Transcript for:
Wooden Bowls with a Router

[Music] wooden bowls with a router and not the lathe now first off i'm not hating on the lathe at all love wood turning woodturning is amazing but a lot of woodworkers at least hobbyists might not have a lathe or like me you have a smaller one where maybe this is the biggest size bowl you can do and so this video is just going to walk you through how you can pull off a bowl a dish with a router now there's a lot of possibilities here you can see a lot of different patterns a lot of different designs and so i'll be walking you through all of these different variations feel free to use the timestamps below to jump around for what you're looking for but it is a fun project if you're in the cutting board game and you've done lots of cutting boards this is a great next step and really uh minimal tools uh you might see a bunch of different things in here but really just a router you know a hand drill and a sander you really could pull this off so wooden bolts with a router check it out first up wood selection so plenty of options here you can get just you know a standard just a solid piece of walnut here or the santos mahogany it's a great look right solid wood uh for that you could get yourself a big slab so i got some big you know 12 inch wide pieces this is already eight quarter two inch thick uh if you're able to find lumber that's thick enough you know go for it so both of these bowls or trays uh they started off as these slabs um you could also take that species and then you could do a glue up and you could do uh cut it on its edge so i could take you know like this sapili here i could cut my strips i can make a really really thick bowl like that that's an option that's what i did with this cedar here so this is actually cedar it's not a hardwood still looks great you could just do a face screen glue up so i have these boards and kind of like a table top you can just glue it up together if you're going to do it like that to make yourself some wider stock just take into consideration the growth rings and alternate just to account for wood movement but that is an option as well however i can't help myself i like to make cutting boards so this is like my edge grain style cutting boards i will show you know a little bit of the steps here but if you're looking to do something like this make sure you check out my cutting board 101 video all the steps on how to mill and get a great glue up uh with something like this but this is just you know like cutting words it's great for off cuts but you can get some really cool really cool patterns so that is another option so i'm gonna walk you through uh basically how to do a glue up like this really quick and then uh how to do you know the cedar one another option if you're not interested in that or you don't need that skip ahead check out the time stamps uh but those are some options i will also briefly show segmenting a little bit of segmented ring how you can add that or just adding just a quick little maple top so lots of options for wood be creative have fun with it but here here are the steps how to do a glue up if you don't need this skip on ahead all right so first step is you want to rip your boards down so i'm going for about a 12 inch diameter bowl so these pieces are about 12 to 14 inches long and now i'm ripping down and cutting the pieces about two and three fourths inches thick uh wide so when i flip these boards on their edge i'm gonna get a bowl a bull blank that's about two and three-fourths inches so you want to just rip down all your stock and then this is just a traditional uh you know edge grain cutting board so i i do recommend checking out that video there's a lot more steps on getting the glue up and milling your wood but here i'm just getting varying thicknesses you do not need this drum sander you see me using lots of other steps for this but you just want to get a bunch of different widths uh to get those cool patterns and then start playing around with the patterns so i'm just using a variety of species here and i'm just constantly measuring to make sure that my bowl is about you know 11 to 12 inches wide and i get some really cool patterns so here you can see all these hardwoods in the front uh over there in the back left corner you can see the cedar looks rather nice and now it's time to glue it on up so i just used titemon 3 it's a water resistant waterproof glue but i'm able to batch out and do three bull blanks at the same time so here i have all my strips uh just in between each set i just make sure i don't include glue but i can get three in the clamps at the same time and just nice even pressure you don't need to over tighten but i do recommend using plenty of glue it's relatively cheap i know it feels like a waste uh but you'll really regret it if you're missing it in spots later uh here you can see i got that blue tape again on the clamp to help with clean up but i got two two in the clamps here you know really it's just uniform pressure you don't need to kill it and just like go to town squeezing too hard just nice nice even pressure uh really six hours will do it for drawing you can let it dry overnight and then i'm using just a paint scraper just a paint scraper here to get these glued off these dots of glue that have uh dried just so i have a level surface for flattening now i am using a planer here you do not need a planer for this project uh the planer just helps me get a nice flat surface for the router but you certainly could use a a a belt sander you can use a handheld sander you just want to clean up that glue get a flat surface for the router to to use the circle jig and so you just need a nice flat surface but the planer does help gets it nice and clean uh you cut kind of a view of what that's going to look like the patterns and all that goodness once you got it nice and clean at the planer you do want to square off the edges you're trying to make some square blinks so i'm just using uh the miter gauge going backwards this was a tip i got from scott morrow designs on instagram it helps me with the height if i had this on a sled i probably couldn't cut it just on the sled so backwards miter gauge get it nice and clean eventually i do uh cut these again to make them square but you can see a nice clean bowl blanks i can see some other just single species got all your woods all right one other option is segmenting so i have some choice woods here some nice curly maple wenge and padauk and i'm just getting them all to level thickness usually you can buy them they're all one inch to begin with but just level thickness and i do recommend using blocklayer.com it's just it helps you with all the math of segmenting uh there's plenty of videos online that show you through that walk you through these steps uh but it gave me you know told me how wide to cut my pieces what my angle was i went with an 18 segment piece and so for me that was 10 degrees i have a really good miter gauge and it really locks in the angle for me but there's sleds there's all sorts of jigs online so make sure you check online if you want to get after segmenting just wanted to show another option here once you have your pieces cut do a do a dry fit so using some hose clamps here you can just kind of see what it looks like i went ahead and i did sand my edges you just want to be really careful here you don't over sand and lose that angle so just really careful with some sandpaper on a you know spray adhesive on a flat surface and then again i'm doing another dry fit just to make sure i didn't ruin it and then uh add your glue so some more tight bond three uh just in between each steps uh in between each pieces and then again those hose clamps so and there you go right so clamp it on up once you're done you're probably gonna have some gaps this is my first time i had gaps you can see that little black line there i filled that with some black ca glue uh sometimes you'll you'll see some gaps and so ca glue and activator really is your best friend that starbound stuff is amazing and so once it is you know filled you want to flatten it so you can just use sandpaper you don't need a fancy tool uh i do have a fancy tool drum sander is amazing so i'm flattening it here but once it's flat then you can glue it up on top of your other piece all right so segmenting is a great option i'll just take some extra steps but it's a great way to not waste too much material and just to add some extra height you know right there gives a little bit thicker bowl another option without messing with all the angles is just the standard face grain glue up so here i just have two pieces of inch thick maple and i'm going to add it to this two inch walnut so it's just going to give me a thicker bowl and with a face grain glue up really important that you do account for the rings so here i've marked out it's kind of like a u shape here and then on this side it's a reverse you want to flip and change the orientation just to take into consideration a wood movement this is a major issue like if you're making a table top this is a smaller bowl i'm going to remove most of the material so it's probably not an issue but i just don't want to take any chances and so you just got your glue up surface it and then just glue it on and there you have a layer if you don't want to waste all the material in the middle with the router you could drill a hole use a jigsaw a coping saw or a scroll saw to remove that material but then it's just a great way to add some layers so here just a nice classy rim to the top uh you could do multiple layers if you wanted that effect but face grain glue up just another option all right so another glue up once you have that top piece surfaced uh throw your glue down again you just want a good healthy squeeze out you could use some table salt here to keep the piece from sliding around just a little bit that is a tip but just a nice healthy squeeze out all the way around same thing with the segmented rings so if you take out the material in the middle uh it's a standard glue up you can see where the glue comes out but you do want to add a piece in the middle of the same thickness we'll get into this in a little bit but that's going to be necessary for the router all right so it's a router bowl so you got your router now you need a circle cutting jig for this project i just went ahead on amazon and i just bought bought one that's already made for me so a lot of different options online uh plenty of different companies make these you could make your own i just went with this one because the mounting holes are already drilled for my router and then there's all these pivot points so i can get really precise circles if you wanted to just make your own there's plenty of videos online check it out make your own jig you just take your router and drill the holes mount it to a piece of mdf uh piece of plywood and then you're just going to drill out your different holes based on on how far you want to go right so i'd have it here drill the hole here there's my pivot point and i can make my circles so you could certainly make your own uh just what you'll see here i'm just using this one here uh you're gonna need a bit right so for this we're making bowls so you want it to be a deep bowl uh so this cute little quarter inch bit it's not going to go very deep um so i went with actually a half inch shank this big spiral up cut bit just make sure you get a bit that's that's long that you know along with the router you can go a little bit deeper you could get a collet extender uh where you can make it just a little bit longer that's an option as well but anyway i'm using this spiral up cut bit links to all the stuff is down below if interested but anyway circle cutting jig let's route out some circles for these bowls all right so first step go ahead and set the depth on your plunge router and then just go ahead and mark your diagonal lines so you want to find the center point of your blank mark it with an awl drill the hole it's a 1 8 inch hole at least for this jig and then i have this 1 8 inch brass rod that i put through using this one i found my pivot point i found the size circle i want for the outside uh trying to maximize how much i have in this piece and then you just work your way around and so once you have your your outside circumference then you know mark it again and then go for your interior and so you really it's up to the look you want so i do recommend not having the walls of your bowl uh being too thin i went a little bit thicker on mine just to be extra cautious you know about three-fourths inch thickness you could go thinner again just feel feel what you want to feel but i want to just look at the clamping set up again so right i have my center pin i have my whole setup here but i do have some scrap wood on either side right so you want to have that so you don't actually accidentally go into your clamps you want to have a good clamping set up like i have here i do recommend hanging that cord up high so it doesn't get in the way my basketball hoop or if you do in the shop you can but i did it outside so the mess is outside um anyway try and hang that cord if possible but really important again is do do have that depth stop set so here you can see where the bit plunges i have at least a half inch on the bottom so uh just take that into consideration make sure your depth stop is set um but make sure you give yourself a good half inch to three quarters inch on the bottom all right another option is you know there's some cool jigs out there just to kind of see you know what size circles you can fit so you can play around with that but if you want to cut the interior circle first or the outside circle first really it's it's up to you i probably would recommend doing the outside first just so you know how big of a bowl you really do have but as you're working your way around you know this is cedar this cut a lot easier usually you want to do just small passes right so this is a spiral up cut bit it's a good bit but it's still you know it's gonna gonna leave some marks you wanna go easy don't put too much strain on the router or the bit so nice light passes and then just keep plunging your way down until you hit that depth stop and um you know clean it out with some some a dust collector or shop vac and you know you see your holes and so again you can see i have the different thickness of the walls but just kind of play around with it um again so back here i found my center hole and i'm putting in the peg so i do recommend with this i did i did 19 bowls uh with this big batch and so i would recommend having an extra you know those 1 8 inch brass rods uh just the ones that this jig came with you know i kept pulling it in it got stuck in some of the really hard stuff so just having some extra on hand in case you bend it but you get a really nice clean look right here and so um there you have it just just using the circle cutting jig and so now you have this spot in the middle uh that you're gonna have to haul uh hog out shortly but really quick when i look at that segmented so i had that center piece in the middle so if you've removed the middle stuff you still need to have a part in the middle right a point in the middle uh with which to use the the router right so i have my center point i kind of figured out what was center and then i'm using the router just to kind of clean it up and i have that nice ring and this is an option for those of you who really don't want to waste you know extra wood in the middle that that is a great option all right so once you've routed out the circle uh you have your exterior uh and then the interior you know the size you need to hog out the middle now you can just use the same bit that you used uh earlier you're just gonna have to switch to a different base plate i'll show you how to do that in a little bit that's what i'll be doing uh but i do recommend you know some people will just go to the drill press and so here you can see i went to the drill press and i hogged up most of the material and then i'll come back later and i'll clean it up but if you don't have a drill press there's other options uh you could just again you could use that same bit from earlier just to get it all out you can use a bowl and tray bit uh it's got a flat bottom rounded edges you might need to use a collet extender to get it deep enough but this is what i'll be doing to clean up after the drill press um but again you don't need all these extra bits you could just use you know a 20 dollar you know flattening bit or just a straight bit just take into consideration this is hard wood that's a lot of strain on the bit uh if you do it all on the bit so just you know options you could also do some power carving i love my little arbor tech turbo plane to carve it out but at this point time to remove the interior stuff so let's go to the drill press drill some holes and next steps all right so first up set that depth stop just like with the router before make sure you're not going too far in your passes and so you know with the forstner bits which is a great way to remove the material there is that point and so it is you are going to leave yourself a little ridge but make sure you just don't go below your final final depth uh so you don't have to keep going deeper and deeper so this is what it's going to look like afterwards you see all those holes and we'll clean that up with the router bit but there is a little ridge there that gets cleaned up with a router and so this is just the step with a drill press and so the drill press is a great option for removing material and this is actually a practice that's been done for a long time by woodworkers you know for decades with template router bowls and and trays and such and so it's just a great way to remove material most woodworkers have you know a drill press if you don't there are those other options um i needed to upgrade i upgraded to this great rikon variable speed uh drill press that you know no belt changes well minimal belt changes great unit had the power i went through all of the hardwoods no problem now some people you know were a little little up in arms on instagram they thought there was a lot of waste here and you're just wasting all that material well that's what bolt turning is you're wasting all the material in the in the middle anyway but if that is a big problem for you and you feel like you know philosophically that's such a waste of wood i am going to repurpose all of these wood chips you could try and resaw this piece you know what your band saw i don't have a bandsaw with a big enough resaw capacity you know these are about 12 inches and you know if you have that you could try and re-glue the pieces back together and there's some other options with that but i think this is perfectly fine you still get a beautiful product but yeah you do have to remove a lot of material in the middle and so it is what it is so i've removed the material in the middle they look beautiful honestly at this point you're like wow these are looking awesome but yeah there is a lot of wood chips just you know repurpose it for different applications once you've done this step you do need to clean it up and so once you're going back to it with a router you're going to need a bigger base plate uh otherwise it's going to dip in it's going to be unsafe so i'm just using some some plexiglas some acrylic here and you just matching up the holes and finding the holes so i took my old base plate and i kind of lined up where the holes are this isn't too difficult it just takes a little bit of practice one thing is i needed some screws that were a little longer fortunately that jig i got it came with a bunch of extra screws for mounting and the screw on the right is the the stock one which is just a little short the one on the left came from this kit so you're gonna just need some screws that are a little bit longer to account for the thickness of the plate you don't have to buy the jig to get longer screws i'm just saying if you have it they're there and so you drill your holes you're going to have to do a countersink hole just to make sure the head of the screw sits below the surface um you know definitely again you want to just maybe test this out on some plywood but you just got to match up your holes and then you know a nice big circle worsener forstner bit and the circle uh in the middle a big circle for the bit to go through and then just go ahead and tighten it screw it on down and uh you got yourself a big plate and so then you pull off that then oh plexiglas it works you could use plywood for this it doesn't have to be plexiglas it's just nice to be able to see through now that i have this little sled this extra extra long plate you see how it can sit on the rim of the bowl and that really helps so now i'm using that bowl and tray bit it's got a nice rounded edges round edge it cleans up the bottom rather nicely and i'm just doing light passes just to clean up the marks from the forstner bit also to clean up the the initial passes uh earlier and so what's great about this it's got a bearing on it so it's not going to dip into the side of my piece it's nice and clean and you can clean up any any edges or any imperfections with sandpaper later but it really does make quick work of it get a nice clean bottom here's a look at that bowl uh that bull bit nice rounded and um that's that's how i cleaned up the bottom so went went to town on all of these and it really this goes super quick uh once you've done uh the drill press if you just use the the bull bit um it just would you know overheat the bit you'd have to wait in between especially if you're doing a big batch like i am if you're just doing a one-off probably not a big issue but makes quick work of it so that base plate nice and big i made mine extra big for some future projects uh but you just need it big enough to rest on the rim of your bowl and once you get them all nice and clean you can take a look at them and be like whoa these are looking great and you can be proud of yourself and proud of the wood i mean honestly it's all about the wood i mean there's a little bit of skill involved but it's really that wood grain showing through okay okay okay now go ahead and pop off the edges just using the band saw my cute little band saw here works just fine and you just want to cut really close to the wood don't leave big big chunks off to the side because you're going to be using a flush trim bit if you leave a little bit too much on the edge that's just too much strain on the router bit and so it's so narrow at the bottom right you only have half an inch that you're actually cutting and so just quick work of it just work your way around trim off the excess and then flush trim time so flush trim bits there's so many options i wish i had a compression bit but this is a great flush trim bit i use uh for a lot of applications a little spiral with the bearing and now you're just removing that bottom material that was just a little that little hair maybe eighth of an inch uh left from the bandsaw so satisfying nice flush beautiful get it nice and clean and so you're removing this material so whatever flush flush trim bit you want to use go ahead and work i do recommend spiral bits a spiral bit or a compression bit you're just going to get a cleaner a cleaner edge and it's going to save you but you're still going to have to sand right so here i'm using a bench top unit it's an oscillating bench top unit it really works great this is just to refine the shape you can see i am throwing in some ca glue here and there because i have some voids some spots but you know you could do this with just a hand sander you don't need a new special sander just you know clamp your piece down and just sand the edge but having something that's mounted just makes it really quick to spin it around just to get a nice clean clean edge yeah so there you go got a nice clean edge now let's talk about edge profiles you could use a chamfer bit nice big chamfer bit or a massive round over bit to add some extra interest to these pieces not necessary but some options right so here is this giant chamfer bit and i'm just go ahead and adding a big chamfer to the bottom and so this just kind of goes with that whole modern look got a big heavy chamfer on the bottom and so this is a look you can go for you're going to need a giant bit to really give that effect and so this is a bigger half inch beast of a chamfer bit works well uh you know like with anything with routers just small bits small bites quarter inch at a time and you can see it's got this nice little edge there and that's a look so if that's a look you like you're going for go for the chamfer bit uh that's an option of course you don't even have to do router bits at all you can just leave it flush at the bottom that looks really cool too but i just want to show you the option of what it looks like if you wanted to do a big chamfer on the bottom more traditional look would be a round over so you need a big round over bit so all of these bits the exact ones linked to this bit and whatnot it's down below if interested but here i'm just adding a big round over on the bottom but here i want to show you what it looks like if you wanted to add a round over on the top and bottom so the nice curve looks a little bit more like a bowl this one's got a big round over on the bottom and then a slight round over on the top so an option there and this one just has the round over on the bottom and then it's flat on the top so some different looks so you can certainly play around with it but it's a it's a fun look okay after you've done the router i do recommend doing the hand don't do hand sanding yet but honestly you can do a lot with the power sander uh and so just a good clamping setup i showed this earlier this is my armor tool bench with these in-line clamps they work amazing whatever clamping setup you have you know just want to get a nice clamped in but just uh starting with 80 grit sandpaper you can really refine the look a lot and so uh do it before hand sanding don't ask me why i'm saying that so much it'll save you a lot of time so uh some 80 grit so i sanded all my bolts bowls to 80 grit and then eventually i worked my way up to 120 to 150 and then eventually 220 but i do recommend just using an orbital sander here just to kind of refine that round over look or that chamfer look or that straight look just get it nice and clean on the outside uh as far as when you're sanding the inside uh you know sometimes it's you just don't have enough room uh depending on the size of your bowl and and the height and your sander and so once you're done sanding the outside you might need a different tool to get on the inside so here's just some options i have this contour sander by arbor tech it's awesome and it works with an angle grinder so it really worked well cleaning up the edges and it contours it's a great tool and it's got the power it's a corded angle grinder so this really cleaned up my bottom uh of the bowl in no time and so this is an option uh power carving is a lot of fun i'll hopefully be doing some more content on that soon but that's an option for cleaning up the bottom or just a twenty dollar attachment for your drill right cheap super cheap uh you have all the different thicknesses there's foam attachments and that can just help if you're having a hard time reaching the bottom with your sander i do recommend one of these little drum sander units for a drill press this unit again was 20 bucks if you have a drill press this is really helpful because this is the hardest part to stand is that interior edge and so working your way around i did you know 80 120 150 and so you can certainly do this by hand as you see here there is a lot of hand sanding that's just the nature of woodworking and really to to refine the look that you want and just to get a superb product uh hand sanding so with hand sanding i usually never start below 120 just because it's a little aggressive in those mark shows so i do 120 150 220 and doing it in between the power sanding all right raising the grain so i'm spraying all of the bowls that are sanded with water so i do this between 150 and 220 after i've sanded to 150 grit so what you're doing this is a cutting board step anything that comes in contact with water you want to get wet and this raises the grains of the raises the grain of the wood and because otherwise when this bowl got washed for the first time it would be all rough and scratchy and be kind of a bummer for the recipients so you just wet it you get it all wet make sure everything gets wet you don't need to soak it and then just dry it off and just let it sit out so the the bowls can uh air dry you don't want to do like extreme like don't dry it in the sun to try and speed it up just get it wet walk away for a couple hours flip it over make sure they're nice and dry and then finish with 220 sanding again all right so you sanded your bowls ready for finish um some some choices here first off food safe finish there's a lot of videos a lot of info out on the interwebs really all finishes are food safe once they fully cured so even the film finishes if it's fully cured it's it's food safe right now you know as far as you know liability with selling things all of that if you want to be a little bit safer that peace of mind then you know go with a finish that's actually labeled food grade or food safe but really most of your finishes should be fine so you could certainly do a film finish it's just going to be a little bit more labor intensive it's going to take some time to cure gonna build up the coat sand in between so definitely your your film finishes plenty of other ones um would work um you know this this is a linseed oil uh beeswax tried and true some other you know in this area where it's kind of like you know not quite film finished but it kind of gets that effect but uh food safe right because it's all you know food safe things again you want to fully cure but this takes time right 24 hours between coats or you could just treat it like a cutting board right so we've raised the grain uh we've sanded it down and then just you know your cutting board finish you know mineral oil or wax you can do a conditioner do otis oil for me i'm gonna treat it like a cutting board i'm gonna actually use a walrus oil cutting board oil and a wood wax it's it's great and that way maintenance is a little bit easier for the recipients i just give them a little uh conditioner but that's how i'm going to finish them any food option any finish option works but let's finish these boards all right so with the walrus oil the cutting board oil you just throw it in whatever oil you're using just throw it in apply it uh you know let it sit for a while maybe come back in a couple hours reapply uh just depends right so with a mineral oil or cutting board finish just know it's not gonna fully quote unquote cure for a long time right it's gonna sweat out some of that oil but it looks beautiful right you can really see those colors come to life my gosh those figured woods really jump out that purple heart that curly maple all right after it's set for a while do want to dry it off uh just make sure it's there i like to use these scouring pads so they're they're they're light and you know it's like basically a you know four other steel wool a synthetic steel wool um you could use 320 sand sandpaper you're just trying to remove any extra fibers just get it extra smooth uh make sure all that oil gets in everywhere nice and smooth and once it's all you know relatively you know smooth again uh then you're gonna add the wax wax is super important wax is really what repels the water especially with this type of finish so i'm using walrus oil board wax it's my favorite stuff i just put it in this other jar i reheated it you know in a boiler just to make it a little bit easier to apply you can make your own homemade stuff but just to get a good wax on there and make sure it's applied everywhere let it sit it doesn't need to sit super long uh but once it's sat uh you want to dry it off and buff it on in so you can just use a shop towel like this you could use those same you know scotch brite you know scouring pads uh that aren't aren't too abrasive uh just to buff it in uh get that nice sheen and so you know that that wax is really important you could do multiple coats of wax if you wanted to one one is sufficient but i do like to send some extra wax and oil conditioner to the recipients just so they can maintain their board as well you could also use a buffer orbital buffers are awesome and they really help get that sheen but waxing is a really important step to get that final product looking awesome so you can see it on the right they really turned out really rather well uh it's those beautiful woods shine through so make a great selection uh with your wood and and have fun with it bowls without a lathe all right there you have it wooden bowls with a router before we wrap this up and bring it on home please consider subscribing uh lots more videos in the works another project similar to this coming up soon uh some of the same ideas some exciting things coming up so subscribe to see more but you know a couple other things yes there are so many more possibilities you know again you can see just you know hey with a router bit you know you can make it but you can also do a lot of different edge profiles uh one thing i want to say is uh my buddy brad ruff i'll i'll leave a link to his instagram down below rough seas woodwork he he's really the one who got me into this he's been making some beautiful bowls he calls in his latheless bowls and um he does a lot of power carving with it uh so using different bits and different things to add texture to it i didn't give you with this batch uh but definitely like you know using the the ball gouge from arbor tech uh some other things adding some textural elements there's a lot of possibilities uh with with this so uh definitely explore uh check out my instagram to to see some more of this and some other sawdust shenanigans but thanks for watching take care and we'll catch you next time