Wood Turning on the Table Saw Part One

PART ONE: Inspiration, Planning, Preparation and Selection

Almost everyone assumes turning a bowl is something you do on lathes.  How about turning a bowl more than 20 inches across out of a huge slab of highly figured hardwood?  Or turning a huge bowl with pockets of rot or bark?  Now that would totally take special and expensive equipment right?  What if I told you there is a way to create massive bowls without a lathe at all?  That is what we are doing here!



Using nothing more complicated than a table saw and some scrap lumber I turn some highly figured Box Elder wood into the two pieces you see above.  Before we start lets take a moment to talk about WHY you might think of doing it this way in the first place.

To start off with I do own a lathe but it is NOWHERE near large enough to tackle a project like this.  Trying to turn something this size on my under-powered machine would be an exercise in futility, but lacking the horsepower isn't the only reason someone might shy away from lathe turning.  Maybe it is a one off creation and you don't want to make the investment.  Maybe there is something inherently unstable about the stock you want to use, something that would make a 24 inch spinning disk potentially very dangerous.  Now I am the first to admit you are exchanging one type of danger for another, but I can also see where this method might be the only way to accomplish a task.  As a "for instance" I have always wanted to make something out of the gallery of a large carpenter ant nest.  For the life of me I can't think of a single way to turn that safely on a lathe but I think it COULD be done using my method.

In this first video I am just introducing the concept and there is little to add but still a few words of advice...

Picking your stock:  Chose wood that is dry and has stabilized.  Turning wood that is still wet will be a recipe for heartbreak.  It is going to warp and twist on you making it next to impossible to progress from step to step.  Make your selection carefully and then set it aside in your work space for a long time.  Give it a chance to acclimate.  If upon inspection you find that the material has warped, twisted bowed or moved in any real way give it a little more time.  Wait for it to stop moving.

Know your tools:  This IS your responsibility.  No one is in charge of your safety but you.  Later in the series I will be doing things that, and this is important to remember, YOUR TOOLS WERE NEVER DESIGNED TO DO.  Now that isn't to say they can't or wont but it bears remembering, pushing boundaries isn't without its own set of risks.  Only you know what you are capable of doing, what your skills allow and what your tools can handle.

Check out our first video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KkKzXVLsRV8&feature=youtu.be

Turning Large Bowls on a Table Saw

This has been one of the most interesting projects we ever turned out on the table saw.  The video of doing this has won us awards on instructables and the bowl itself won awards at the fair.  Every once in a while someone will come up to me and say how they used to cut circles on a table saw, and occasionally I will see a small bowl turned in much the same way but never more than about 10 inches or so.  I am proud of this idea, not claiming I was the first to ever do it, far from it, but I can say that I thought it up myself independently.  There is some pride in that.

Some have raged against the practice, mostly on the side of either the saw is going to kick back/bowl explode, or that you can't see the cutters and might stick a finger into them.  I suppose those both have some validity but then they are true for nearly any other project as well.  As for not seeing the cutters, lots of tools, jointers, routers, plainers, even dado cutting on the table saw, obscure their cutters.  Why would this example be inherently any more dangerous than any other?  For the most part I dismiss that complaint as an internet expert.

The kick back... well this isn't something that can be feather boarded in place for each cut.  That would take days and I don't see an easy way to do it.  It is true that the project is captured only by that dowel but that is a substantial hardwood dowel and it would STILL have to lift and throw the sled on top of it.  I keep lots of weight on the sled and keep the sled contained in its tracks.  I have been doing this for quite some time now and other than blatantly forcing that dado blade to take huge cuts AND counter feeding it I just don't see how it could bite hard enough to blast that whole mess.  All woodworking is dangerous but I don't even see this as more dangerous than say ripping thin strips of figured wood.

Below you can find more videos of us using this unusual idea.