Last night I finished turning this large bowl from an even larger chunk of sycamore supplied by Home of Wood.

Here’s the finished beastie:

The blank I started off with was so large I had to swivel the head of my lathe sideways to get it turning. Once it was roughed and made round, I was just able to rotate it back over the bed of the lathe – there was no room to spare.

I kept as much of the width as I could, so the finished bowl is very nearly 12″ in diameter at its widest point.

Here are some pics of it mounted on the chuck & on the lathe.

I used several thin coats of Wood Wax 22 for the finish on this one, which is a mix of beeswax and carnauba wax. It’s easy to apply and when you apply a little friction on the lathe (to generate some heat) it really brings out the grain and details of the sycamore.

After the ’22 was done I then applied a thin layer of Liberon Wax to seal it and provide a deep gloss finish, which should be reasonably hard-wearing.

Not sure the pics illustrate quite how large this bowl is, but it’s really pretty mahoosive!

Much like the Woodturning – New Ash bowl I turned and posted about recently, there are some nice contrasts on the underside of this one.

I’m aware that if I’d gone a bit deeper/thinner on the inside this colour would have started to show through there too, which may have worked well, but I didn’t want to risk making it too thin. Or risk meeting the jaws of the chuck with the tip of my bowl gouge…

It covers a 12″ vinyl album pretty nicely 🙂