Christmas Gift Bowls
It’s that time of year again. It’s when woodworkers scurry into their shop and make a bunch of wooden gifts for people because we’re too cheap to buy stuff from the store! I’m kidding of course. Everyone knows that we really give wooden gifts because they’re fun to create and we can make them as unique as we want. Plus, it never hurts to use up some of that scrap wood that’s laying about the shop.
Today’s project is how to make wooden bowls with the router. I really like making these. I’ve done several for family members in the past, but I haven’t made any Christmas themed ones. To start, I made a few printable templates. You can download these for free and make your bowls at home!
I printed mine out and spray glued them to a piece of particle board. This will give me a template that I can use to make as many bowls as I want. At the bandsaw, I cut out my pattern, staying as close to the line as possible. I was then able to glue the particle board back together where the bandsaw blade cut it. A little sanding along the inside edge and I had the perfect template to start batching out bowls.
I decided to use cherry to make my bowls. I took a board that was approximately 2” thick and milled it down until it was flat. I screwed my template on top of my board. This lets me remove and attach the template multiple times and it always registers in the right spot. Make sure that you recess your screw heads. You don’t want them sticking above the surface of the template because you may bump into them with the router. Also, don’t put screws where the bowl edge will ultimately be. I placed mine as far away from the bowl as possible.
I traced my shape onto the cherry board and unscrewed the template. I don’t want to carve out that entire bowl with a router bit. It will take forever, plus it’s a lot of stress on the bit. Instead, I remove most of the waste at the drill press using some forstner bits. Once the waste is drilled away, I can then screw the template back onto the cherry board.
I needed a way to clamp my bowl to the workbench. If you are using a large board then you can probably clamp it far enough away from where you’re routing so that the router doesn’t bump into the clamps. Since I’m working with a smaller board, I screwed a piece of particle board to the bottom of the bowl, ensuring that the screws were outside of the bowl area. Now, I can clamp the particle board to the workbench and my board stays in place.
Routing out bowls is messy work so I urge you to wear safety glasses and a respirator. I’m using a 3/4” diameter bowl bit in my router. It has a bearing at the top so it rides along the template. As you route further down into the bowl, the bearing will begin riding on the interior face of the bowl. You don’t have to use one of these bits. You could use a spiral or straight bit along with a router bushing. Instead of having a curved bottom your bowl will have sharp interior edges. I made a bunch of passes with the router. I don’t like to take too much material off at a time. I kept routing until I had a bowl bottom that was about 1/4” thick.
After the bowl was routed out completely, I used a compass to draw a border about 3/8” around the entire bowl. You could also have spray glued the downloaded template directly on your workpiece before routing and then cut along the lines on the template. Either way works. Using a thin blade at the bandsaw I cut out the exterior of the bowl. Then I did a whole bunch of sanding on the outside and inside. If you plan to make a ton of these, then you may want to make a template that lets you use a flush trim bit around the outside too.
Once the bowl was sanded, I applied a hardwax finish. I’m starting to use these finishes on more projects. I like the look they provide and they are really easy to apply. I love how my bowls look. If you give this project a try let me know how it turned out in the comments below!
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