Walnut Bowl
I was asked to make a salad bowl out of solid walnut a very, very long time ago. I lucked into a very nice piece of walnut that had been drying for several years, so I snapped it up. Despite being handled apparently properly, there was a bit of a crack in the end grain that is a little unfortunate, but doesn’t seem to have affected the integrity of the bowl.
The wall thickness is about 5/8″, and the outer diameter is about 10 3/4″. The over all height is about 6″, giving it a very deep inside. I found that as I turned my gouges, I wasn’t able to keep the bevel rubbing any deeper than about 3″ from the rim, so I ended up using a deep parting tool that is intended for bowl coring to make straight plunge cuts to the approximate depth I needed. I followed that up with scrapers to achieve the round bottom and then a heavy dose of power sanding to get rid of all of the tear out. This did the trick but I’d really rather have been cutting than scraping. This is intended for use in my kitchen, so I didn’t bother with being too fussy about the interior, as tongs and forks will no doubt scratch it up in short order. The finish is walnut oil inside and out.