Carving a V-grooved bowl

Words and photos: Robert Howard

My work revolves around beauty. I have no patience with ‘deep and meaningful’ stuff, with its requisite post-completion-rationalisation, often detailed in a little essay tacked up on the wall nearby. For me to like what I make, it has to be something that I believe is beautiful.

I also find that I do my best work when I am just having fun, because it is light hearted, stress-free, whimsical – just doodling about. My mind is free to simply play. But at the same time, I am able to bring to bear everything I have learned about what I find to be beautiful, and I use this to refine and judge the lines and forms that my play produces.

There is this little dance, with the play of free creativity bouncing around within a serious aesthetic discipline, or framework. This shallow bowl is one result of that process. I made it triangular this time, after an earlier round version, because I thought that if I am carving it, I should make a shape that can’t simply be turned.

I have used my favourite Australian red cedar, but you can use any medium density wood that you think will carve well. At its best, cedar carves beautifully, but a bad piece can be a horror. Stay away from it if it is light in colour or in weight, or soft, or furry. Look for a piece with a rich, deep red colour, and at the hard and heavy end of the cedar scale. If in doubt, try carving a bit at the end of the board, and see how it goes. You need a very, very sharp tool to carve really soft wood, and that is especially so for carving soft cedar with a V-tool.

If you find the prospect of making all the fine V-cuts a bit daunting, you can replace them with shallow curves made with, say, a No.7 or No.8 gouge. Below are are the steps I followed.

1. With a compass set at 145mm, from the mid-point of one end, mark an arc across the other end. From one end of this arc, close to one side, mark an arc to intersect with the other end of the arc. This locates the three corners of the bowl. Draw in the three arcs, and carefully cut out the shape, using any saw that you have handy that will do the job.

2. Prepare the wood by cleaning up the base. I used a handplane, but could have used my jointer (beware of using a thicknesser, as the blank might not be long enough for your machine). I used a compass plane (Stanley No.20) to clean up the sides, but you could also use a drawknife, spokeshave, linisher or disc sander. Don’t ignore this step, or hard experience will teach you why it is important.

3. With a drill and a bit of around 6mm or 1/4", mark with tape a depth of 30mm, which will leave a bowl bottom of 10mm thickness.

4. Drill a vertical hole in the centre to this depth. This will keep the centre marked after you carve out its pencilled-in position. Using each corner as centre, I used my compass to mark in a series of randomly spaced curves, parallel to the outside of my wood block, to guide my carving.

5. As a helpful guide, you might prefer to make up this template. The vertical lines are 10mm apart, with the depth of each numbered. Please note the template is only true in three places because the form is asymmetrical – the centre point is not in the middle of the template.

6. This useful jig was made to hold the block. It is a bench hook, about 250mm wide and around 400mm long. I drilled 4 x 12.5 mm holes as shown, to take four lengths of 12.4 mm dowel. Make the fit of the bowl inside these dowels a little loose so it can be easily moved. The holding power of the dowels will be increased with a thick bottom board made from 50mm stock. Protect your hands with a pair of gloves. Older style cycling gloves are ideal, as they have generous padding in the right areas. (Newer, hi-tech ‘designer’ gloves are predictably stingy on the padding.) When you carve, the end of the tool handle should be pushed by the centre of the palm of your driving hand and new carvers will quickly develop a blister without a glove. Your other hand can also take a battering, so it will help to protect it as well.

7. The deep gouges (No’s 7, 8 and 9) can remove a lot of wood, very quickly. The 7 and 8 gouges shown in this picture are from 18 to 30mm wide. They can be powered by hand, or by mallet. I use a mallet to begin with, and switch to hand when closing in on my final shape.

8. Start carving by gouging out a hole in the centre of the block. I used the 8/18 gouge (No.8, 18mm wide), working along the first set of marked lines. You will find the process much easier if you can keep your work as neat as possible.

9. Here you can see what I mean by neat. With practice, you can work very quickly, but still place your cuts neatly beside each other, and keep them roughly the same shape and depth. I work around at least twice on the outer series of cuts, until the shape is continuous from top to bottom. It is most important to visualise the shape you are after, and try to make the cutting edge of the gouge trace out that shape as it moves from top to bottom of each cut. You cannot carve a curve if the gouge is moving in a straight line. Practically, this means beginning with the handle of the gouge high, and progressively dropping the handle as the blade moves down the slope of the cut. This action becomes automatic after a while.

10. You can see the gentle curve of each cut in this photo, as the carving moves towards the final depth indicated by the drill hole. As always, concentrate on getting each cut to follow neatly the one before it. After you finish one side, reposition the block on the holding jig to allow you to comfortably carve the next side.

11. Work with the No.8 gouge is finished when you reach the outer lines, and are down to the depth of the drilled hole. Switch to a No.3 gouge of anywhere from 20 to 35mm wide (depending on what size you have available, and your hand strength, although you can still use a mallet if you prefer), and begin to flatten out the surface. Take care as you approach the line where a pair of sides meet. By carefully cutting in from each of the two sides, you can pop out the wood shavings, leaving a clean line of intersection.

12. It can help to first define the line of intersection with a V-tool. At this stage you will probably also have to spend a considerable amount of time refining the final curve of each side. This is where your template can be indispensable. Note that a template must be used from a reference surface. In this case, my template has two tabs – one at each end – that must finally sit on the top surface of my bowl. Without these, you might carve the correct surface shape, but it might not be orientated correctly to the rest of the bowl – it might be horizontal, or vertical, for example.

13. The finished inside surface needs to be as smooth as possible, straight off the tool. I do not advise sanding it, unless you want to spend a lot of time resharpening your V-tool, as the sandpaper leaves grit in the wood surface that will quickly blunt your edges.

14. Next, use either your fingers as a gauge, or your compass, or something like my Colen Clenton pencil gauge, to mark out a line about 10–12mm below the top inner edge of the bowl.

15. Use a flat chisel, or an almost flat No.2 gouge, carve a flat sloping surface from the outside top edge of the bowl to the line that you have just drawn. This surface will serve to accentuate the top of the V-cuts you are about to carve, giving them a much livelier appearance.

16. Once the surface is finished, and the top slope is carved, mark out guide lines for the V-cuts to follow. These can be randomly spaced, or you can use your dividers and trial and error to mark out a series of spaces approximately 10mm apart.

17. With a sharp V-tool (I used a Pfeil No.12/12mm), make the first cut down the line of intersection between two of the three inner faces. If, in the beginning, the first cut is about a third of the width between the first two pencil guide lines, it needs to stay that way as it proceeds down the inner surface. To do so, it must become progressively shallower. Continue down only as far as you feel comfortable. Note in the photo how the cut on the right hand edge of the V is going against the grain.

18. The arrows in this photo show the direction of the progression of the cuts, so as to have the correct orientation to the grain. Some woods will not allow you to cut against the grain at all, in which case you would need to cut one side in one direction, and the other side in the other direction. That would not be practical with cuts this narrow. With this cedar, however, a sharp tool can cut against the grain, particularly if the wood on that side of the cut has the support of uncut wood behind it. If the wood behind has already been cut, the top ridge formed by the second, against the grain cut, has very short cross grain, and will likely crumble under the pressure of the cut.

19. The bottom part of the cuts can be completed with the same V-tool, or one of a smaller size (note that the tip of the tool is the same size on all the tools of the same number, in this case No.12, and only the sides are smaller on the smaller tools). Not all cuts will reach the bottom, as there is insufficient space, so some will peter out or be over-cut by those on each side. Concentrate on aiming each cut at the centre of the bowl, and stop the cut when it seems appropriate to do so. You might need to rework the centre to achieve a more balanced grouping once all the cuts have been completed.

20. I have completed the interior first because it is easier to carve with the entire bottom of the block supporting it. Now we can turn the block over and mark out the back for carving. I used the pencil gauge to draw the lines on the sides of the bowl block.

21. Using each corner as centre, I drew the 22 and 43mm lines on the bottom of the block. It would be a good idea to draw the 62mm line now as well (I did it later as you will see, but it is easier to do it now).

22. When carving the 22–20mm first bevel off all round, once again you need to take care with the grain direction. Remember to distinguish between figure (the dark heavy lines caused by the growth rings of the tree intersecting with the plane of the wood surface) and grain (the small, needle-like, short black lines), when you look to determine the grain direction (see my article in AWR#87). The drawn arrows indicate the carving directions I have followed. The left and right sides are mostly long grain, while the top side is endgrain, where the curve of the side causes a grain change at each end.

23. Once the 43–35mm bevel has been carved, the 25mm line can be drawn onto the bevel. I used a compass as shown to do both this line and the 62mm line (which could have been more easily done earlier). I used a scrap of ply to raise the compass point to the level of the 35mm line – this is only approximate, and I should point out that we do not need to worry about precision in any of these measurements. Small errors will not be noticeable. The black arrow shows the last bevel to be carved.

24. Looking again at our template diagram, you can see the three small triangular areas that remain as corners on the outside bowl walls. I use an almost flat, Pfeil No.2 gouge to carefully carve these away, and to generally work over the entire outside wall surfaces to give them the quality of final finish I prefer.

25. There are three details of this finishing process to take care with. One is to ensure the base triangle is shaped and positioned correctly relative to the top of the bowl. Once that has been done, the shape of the base can be isolated and emphasised – I have done this with three, carefully cut lines, using a Pfeil No.12 V-tool. Last is to make sure that the three corner lines are straight, and that they are in their correct alignment, joining each corner of the base to the respective corner of the bowl. These corner lines can be shifted and, if necessary, straightened, by carving away appropriate amounts of the sides as required.

26. Once you are satisfied with the entire bowl, you are free to autograph it. I have been experimenting with using a knife rather than a V-tool to do this. It is harder to do, but gives a cleaner result. All that now remains is polishing. I prefer the look of a tooled finish usually. For the underneath of an object that we mostly ‘see’ with our fingers only, I think it adds a little surprising warmth to the viewing experience.

The finish I prefer when heat and water are not expected to be an issue, is shellac, or French polish. I brush it on with a brush designed for the purpose, and ‘cut’ each dry coat with Liberon 0000 steel wool. After four coats, I cut as usual and then apply a coat of wax.

It is a cliche, but true nevertheless, that you learn to carve by carving. If you are trying to learn, and want to try this bowl, my advice is to do your best with it, but give yourself permission to stuff it up. And, if you do stuff it up, do it again. And again if necessary.

Finally, just to show you that none of us are immune to failure, let me say that that I wasn’t happy with the spacing of the internal V-cuts or their convergence in the piece I made. Why did this happen? Who knows? I think I just had a bad day, as we all do.

Robert Howard is a woodworker and sculptor who lives in Brisbane. He teaches regular woodcarving classes from his studio. Learn more at roberthoward.com.au