My nephew is applying to a design school at Western Washington State University and decided that he needed a new wood working project to round out his portfolio. I have a very modest wood working shop in my garage, so he came over looking for some ideas and he decided that he wanted to turn a wooden bowl with a resin lip. Of course, I agreed to help him.

For some backstory, I bought the lathe back in 2013 when my son became interested in wood turning. I bought it at Harbor Freight for around $250, so it is not exactly the best lathe that money can buy. I got really good at turning pens on the lathe, but I’ve never attempted anything bigger than that. Years ago I received a decent bowl gouge and a spindle gouge for my birthday, but I had never used them. How hard could it be?

My nephew came over with a 12” round of elm to use for the bowl. The first night I was simply trying to shape the outside of the bowl, and it did not go well. I was not sure which gouge to use, and it kept catching, creating huge marks in the wood. We finished early that night and we decided to try again the following weekend. Meanwhile, I knew that I had to watch some YouTube video to figure out what I was doing wrong.

The first thing I realized was that I was turning with the spindle gouge rather than the bowl gouge, but that neither gouge was shaped correctly. I shaped and sharpened my chisels, but realized that I needed to do some practice before my nephew came over the following weekend, so I went to Rockler and bought a small maple bowl blank and carved it out. It turned out OK, but I definitely made some mistakes.

The next weekend, my nephew came over and we finished shaping the outside of the bowl and then built a mold to hold the resin for the lip of the bowl using corrugated plastic, hot glue, and duct tape. I am comfortable with resin, so this part wasn’t hard.

The next weekend we hollowed out the bowl (with only a few catches at the end) and then I had to do some patching on the resin.

I was having fun, so I remembered that I had a small round of walnut that a friend had given me years ago, so I cut it into sections, poured some resin, and turned a small bowl for my office.

We finished the big bowl the following weekend and then we turned two handles that would be used as serving spoons. The result turned out really great.