Some time ago I bought a chuck for my lathe to hold bowls while I turned them. The only problems were that I did not know how to sand them to perfection, and I did not know how to finish the bottoms correctly.

My woodturning club purchased a nice lathe recently, and some of the professional turners have been demonstrating how to do various things. At our last meeting one showed how to finish a bowl. This was a revelation to me.

One thing that is needed is an air driven angle die grinder from Harbor Freight. This costs $15 on sale. Then you can make or buy the sanding devices. I chose to buy mine.

www.vinceswoodnwonders.com - This guy has very high quality discs that work!

The other thing required is a home made drive disc. I made mine using a faceplate and some MDF.

It is necessary to face the disc with some kind of non-slip material.

I used a piece of the non slip rubber waffle used for holding pieces while you sand them.

I finished the face of the bowl before I removed it from the lathe. Keep in mind that this was my first try at this, and I did not use a fine piece of wood. I just glued up some carob stock to try to learn this technique. And the glue line is pretty obvious.

Now it was time to attend to the ugly bottom as it came out of the lathe.

It is necessary to leave the center dimple so that you can center the bowl against the rubber drive.

I carefully centered the piece so I could sand it.

I finished as much as I could, and removed the bevel which the chuck holds.

Now I removed the piece from the lathe and then used a gouge to remove the remaining center. Now it was time to sand out any remaining marks.

The center of the bottom is dished in. The purpose of this is so that no one can tell by looking how the bowl was held in the lathe. The outer part of the base is rounded over for the same reason.

And this is the finished base. It isn’t perfect, but I now have done one, and my next one will be better.

The finish on this piece is just wax. I sanded it to 400 grit, and that waxed quite easily. The die grinder makes short work of the sanding. And it also works well on flat stuff that I have had difficulty with.

James D. Thompson,
the old Millrat in Riverside, CA

July,2006