04: Cutting Veneer Strips – Part 3
Filed under: Making a Segmented Bowl, Segmented Bowl Making, Video
This video demonstrates one method of cutting thin slices of wood into veneer to be used as accent strips between the segments of a stave-type segmented bowl. This method can produce veneer strips that are within a tolerance of a few thousands of an inch in thickness to each other. Be sure to have a sharp saw blade and a zero clearance throat plate installed on the table saw. I’m using a combination Forest blade (3/32″ thick, 40 teeth-10″ diameter) with a stabilizer to reduce vibration for this process. I do not have a thickness or drummer sander to run the pieces through after ripping so this is the final process before gluing the veneer to the staves.
Great Grandfather’s Wooden Multi-Plane Box
The photos are my great grandfather’s Stanley #45 Hand Plane. His name was H.O. Helland and the box was made in 1924. He was a Norwegian carpenter. My grandmother always referred to him as a barn builder. He lived in Price County, Wisconsin.
Nursery Projects
After I found out that we were expecting our first child, I knew that it was going to take a little work to get the nursery set up. For the room itself, I decided I wanted up put up wainscoting around the room. Since I planned on painting the wainscoting, I built everything out of mdf except for the top molding that I made out of pine. I used 1/2″ mdf for the raised panels and side rails and 5/8″ mdf for the top and bottom rails. Read more
Segmented Bowl Demo at KC Woodworkers Guild
Turning a Segmented Bowl with Jay Helland
By Shelly Taylor (Kansas City Woodworkers’ Guild)
Jay Helland did a wonderful presentation on the process of making a stave-type segmented bowl at the September meeting. To honor his mentor, Sonny Sharrar, from who he learned the art of bowl making, Jay began with a poem by D.H. Lawrence:
Things men have made with wakened hands, and put soft life into
Are awake through years with transferred touch and go on glowing
For long years and for this reason, some old things are lovely
Warm still with the life of forgotten men who made them.
Sonny may no longer be with us but the beauty of his work lives on.
A stave-type segmented bowl basically consists of three main parts – the bowl body, the bowl base, and the decorative top ring. Each part involves a series of subassemblies that comes together to complete the bowl. What follows is an overview of the process as well as resources for you to access if you’d like to make one of these beautiful bowls yourself!
First, of course, you must design your bowl and Jay suggests “you begin with the end in mind.” For design ideas, consult bowl-making books or peruse the Internet where there are lots of websites posted by craftsmen displaying their work. Or you may want to look at Southwest pottery for design ideas. Decide on the rough dimensions of the bowl – the major and minor diameters and the overall height – and draw (by freehand or using drafting tools/programs) the bowl’s profile on graph paper folded in half. Cut it out with scissors and determine the angle of the bowl side by measuring from the vertical center line to the inside angle. Jay uses Kevin Neely’s Compound Angle Computer Program to then calculate the dimensions of the individual segments of the bowl.
The particular bowl that Jay demonstrated making via slides and video clips contained twelve segments in its body. Jay cut the stave segments on a table saw using a compound angle cutting sled that he had modified for the task from a Kreg Miter Jig, using a gauge to set the angle determined for his design. He cut veneer strips to place between each segment and then glued up the staves one by one in quarter segments. 
Jay used Tight Bond 2 on the side of each of two staves and then rubbed the segments together until he felt the “grab” of the pieces. He then stopped and held the two stave segments together for 20 – 30 seconds for the glue to set and put the pieces on a granite work table with shims to hold them in place to dry. Two quarters of 3 stave segments each were then glued together to make a half and the halves were sanded on a disc sander to flatten their sides to prevent gaps. Next, the two halves were glued together and held by rubber bands for pressure until the glue dried. Once the stave segments of the bowl body were securely attached to one another, Jay used a drill press to mill the top and bottom of the bowl and so flatten each edge parallel to the other. He then made a face plate by drawing a circle the size of the bowl’s diameter and glued it onto the top of the bowl. He attached it to a lathe and turned the outside of the bowl body. Jay completed the making of the body of the bowl by cutting a mortise into the bottom to receive the tenon of the bowl base that he was ready to construct next.
The base of Jay’s bowl design involved making an eight point star medallion, the individual pieces of which he cut on a band saw. When he completed making the medallion, he attached it to a face plate and cut a mortise on the lathe. Likewise, Jay cut a tenon on the base to which to fit the medallion and the bowl base was glued to the body of the bowl. Jay attached this to a face plate and then turned the inside of the bowl.
Jay constructed the third and final part of the bowl, the bowl ring, from sixteen segments of alternating wood and glued it to the top of the bowl. All three parts of the bowl were now together and Jay attached the bowl to a face plate for turning the bowl ring on the lathe. One last step in the construction of the bowl involved “reverse chucking” in which the bottom of the bowl is turned so that it won’t wobble on a flat surface.
Of course, Jay beautifully finished the bowl as well and used a combination of 1/3 polyurethane, 1/3 boiled linseed oil, and 1/3 tung oil that he applied liberally and allowed to penetrate for ten minutes. He then wiped it off and let the finish dry for 24 hours before lightly rubbing with 4/0 steel wool. He repeated these steps a few times to get the surface quality he wanted and then applied paste wax with 4/0 steel wool and buffed with a clean cloth. Voila! A gorgeous one-of-akind stave-type segmented bowl had been created that would make Sonny Sharrar proud.
Roll-Top Desk Is a Long-Time in the Making
Have you ever taken longer than you thought it should to finish a project? Well I might just hold the record! In 1980 a student/athlete of mine who wanted to take my high school woodworking course but he also had plans for a career in medicine. It was difficult for him to work a practical arts class into his busy college-prep schedule. He would come in before school to learn and work on projects. He became very interested in some of the roll-top desks my non-medical bound students were constructing. Again he expressed interest in taking my class because he too “wanted a roll-top”. It was at that time I promised him that if he became a physician that I’d make him his “roll-top. 
About 6 years later I received a call confirming that I had received his medical school graduation invitation and that my family and I would attend, and “oh by the way had I remembered my promise”. I had! So I feverishly started making his desk. I thought why not cut out the parts for three desks so that I could give one to my former athlete, keep one for myself and sell one to pay for the wood. Well I got Dr. Cartland Burns’ desk completed in time for graduation circa 1987. I finished the second desk in 2002, which I sold to a good friend of mine. The last desk is still waiting after 24 years and counting to be completed. The phrase ‘The cobbler’s children have no shoes’ rings true in my home as well as it does in many a woodworker’s.
By the way, Dr. Cartland Burns is a pediatric surgeon working at the University of Pittsburgh, PA. The good doctor still calls his old coach, is still doing his woodworking and his service to the children of Pennsylvania is praiseworthy!