Turning my first bowl on the lathe

This past week I was out of town for work, and I visited my good friend Don Orr's shop. He was gracious enough to host me at his shop for the evening for dinner and teaching me how to turn a bowl.

We started with sharpening, he showed me his wolverine sharpening jig home-made clone, and how to shape and hone the gouges we used.

I didn't get a photo of the profiles, but one was basically an ellsworth grind, and the other was a much blunter profile, which I liked more. I also got to try a round scraper for cleanup and then sanding on the lathe. Note to self, get DC fired up before getting the spinny thing going... koff koff... Turning wasn't bad, but sanding would have been a different story. Don has a really cool DC hose holder for the lathe, I need pictures of it the next time I visit so I can build a copy of it.

Here's the end product...no, wait. I'm only kidding....a little..Don had a 8 or 9" Ash blank all set.After a couple of walk throughs for angle and such here I went...Don is an excellent teacher, and I cannot thank him enough for opening his shop to me and giving me this lesson. I had a blast, Thanks Don!

Here I am starting to rough out the blank after we got it on the lathe and spinning nicely. It was a little unbalanced, but not enough that Don's very nice Jet full sized lathe couldn't handle it. He also has a Jet Midi, but for this large of a blank it wouldn't have done the job very well.

As Little Bill Grumbine would call it (.... yep, I said little. Ask Bill about hanging out with Bill and Nettie Turpin from NC after 5 Barns and you'll understand 'Little') I was excercising my 'turning muscle.' (turning muscle = Big Belly, something which Bill and I share)

After awhile, we wound up with this:

Here's proof that I didn't turn it into a Funnel (turn right through the bottom of the bowl)

Here are a Couple of shots I took at my motel later that evening

Thanks for looking!