Woodturning is said to be the safest form of woodworking, that said it can still be dangerous and care should be taken at all times

The methods and procedures I show here are what I do at the moment and feel safe doing, I am not suggesting that you should do things the same way, that is up to you, if you don’t feel safe doing it one way find another way of doing it.

Above all take care and remember if this is your hobby it is supposed to be fun so enjoy it.

I know of a number of different ways to turn a 3 cornered bowl and they all involve cutting the wood to shape either before or after turning, except for this way.

To make this version you start of with a cube of your chosen wood, the closer it is to a perfect cube the better the results will be.

You now need to mount it between centers using opposing corners as shown below.  

There are 2 ways I use to hold this between centers the first is by using a standard drive center and tail center to do this mark about 3/4” up on each side from one corner join these up and cut of this piece.   This will now give you a flat area which will take your drive center and tail center.

The way I prefer to hold them is using the two centers below, one is a safety drive center with the Centre spike removed and the other is a revolving tail center with a cone insert.   I find this a much easier way to hold it and more forgiving when you have a catch.

Now it is mounted between centers the first thing I do is turn what will be the base down to fit in the chuck.   For this I use a roughing gouge or a 1/2” bowl gouge making sure I keep the rest as close as possible to the work.   A tip here is to put a mark on the tool rest where the corners are too keep your fingers safe.   The other thing to be careful of here is to make sure you dont cut too far forward and ruin the shape.   If you look at it from the tailstock end you can see where the corners will be and just make sure you start cutting behind them.

All I do at this stage is take enough off from the base of the bowl to make a spigot for the chuck and below the spigot remove enough so that it will go in the jaws properly.   I want to keep the tail under the spigot for the final part where it is reversed turned.

In the next picture you can see it in the chuck and ready to start turning.

I start by turning away the front of the bowl until I can see the shape emerging.

Once I get to this stage I then move round to shape the base.

At this stage the outside of the bowl is turned to the shape I want it.

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