Andy from Cobweb Crafts shows how quickly a wood bowl can be made on a lathe. This can take hours for an amateur, but he whips out a professional looking bowl in a matter of minutes. Anyone who appreciates wood turning should check out the video. He goes form blank to bowl in under ten minutes.
Click here to read the full post on his blog.
A wood lathe is a tool which rotates a piece of wood at high speed. The wood can then be carved with a chisel in order to produce symmetric pieces. If you’ve ever seen a round patterned table leg you can be sure it was produced on a wood lathe.
The piece of wood is attached to the spindle with a center or a chuck and the other side is in contact with the tailstock. The lathe is then turned on and the motor located in the headstock spins the wood up to a high speed. The turning wood can then be worked with chisels or gouges to carve it into the desired shape. The wood lathe tools are held against the tool rest in order to prevent them from being pushed down by the spinning motion of the lathe. The position of the tool rest can be adjusted to be as close as need to the piece of wood.
Wood lathes have been in use for thousands of years. Early lathes were man powered, later designs included steam and water wheel powered lathes. Modern lathes are powered by electric motors and often can be run at variable speeds. Lathes are commonly used industrially and are often computer controlled for mass production.
Here are a couple of pictures of some pieces produced on a wood lathe. On the right is a table leg. The symetric shape is an indication that it was turned on a lathe. Below is a wood bowl which was produced by hollowing out a block of wood using a gouge. The bowl was probably held in place by a faceplate attached to the spindle of a the lathe
