Frank Howarth, who has a shop that would put most woodworkers to shame, made the beautiful bowl seen in the picture above as a wedding present. Naturally, a bowl like this takes a lot of work to make (seriously, a lot), as seen in the video below.
Frank started out with two pieces of wood, maple for the lighter color, and walnut for the darker color. He first cut them into shape for the middle pattern, which, as you might guess, is no small feat. Not only did they have to be cut into the pattern you see, but the curvature of the bowl also had to be taken into account. If you don’t watch anything else from the fairly long (but extremely well-produced) video below, definitely check out around 3:30 when things start to “magically” come together.
Once the pattern is completed and glued together, several sections of wood were glued to the top and bottom to form the ends of the bowl. After things were roughly aligned, there was an incredible amount of lathe work to get things smooth, as well as some sanding and finishing. Really a great piece.
If you’d like to see more of Frank’s work, here’s an excellent Sake holder that he made. It’s very nice as well, but is much simpler. Maybe it would be inspirational for those that “only” have a decently-equipped shop!
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