Date and start time, Wednesday 3rd July 2024, 6.45pm, please note the change of date for our meeting, this is due to the Westminster Elections happening on the 4th July.
This meeting has been organized by Barry Cumming and Barry’s theme for the evening is making square bowls, these can be made in a variety of ways some of which you will see at the meeting. Barry has not ventured into making these types of bowls so far with his woodturning and I’m going to partly mentor him for his first square bowl with an audience. He has also arranged for 3 more turners to be involved with making a square bowl, 2 of which I know to be approached from completely different angles.
We haven’t had many meetings where this type of bowls were made but I did find a few pictures in our archives that show a variety of approaches in making square bowls, from the very simple to something a little different.
Here are a few of the pictures I found and that we might get to see being made.
![](https://www.highland-woodturners.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/Feature-7-1-1024x473.jpg)
This has to be the simplest of all the square bowls, as you can see it’s been made with no real detail other than the very pleasing shape and taking advantage of the colours in the grain structure, the wood is Spalted Beech.
![](https://www.highland-woodturners.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/Feature-3-2-1024x490.jpg)
In this bowl we are getting a little more adventurous, the shape is similar but the depth is much more and a foot has been applied.
![](https://www.highland-woodturners.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/Feature-2-2-1024x393.jpg)
Now for an even more adventurous design, here the bowl has been lifted onto the 4 wings and a top rim has been added, in making this type of bowl it’s important that the shape of the underside of the bowl continues through the wings to the top rim giving you a very nice flowing line if followed through.
![](https://www.highland-woodturners.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/Feature-4-2-1024x412.jpg)
Here is one of my own square bowls, it has a foot some very simple lines in it’s shape and I have embellished the wings with some Laser insert work.
![](https://www.highland-woodturners.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/Feature-5-2-1024x489.jpg)
Although not square I thought you may want to see how to approach making a square or in this case a triangular bowl can also be made. Here the turner has cut the blank into the shape they wanted, then using the paper insert system for gluing they then turned the bowl as normal before separating the glued on parts revealing the triangular shape, as can be seen here.
![](https://www.highland-woodturners.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/Feature-6-2-1024x524.jpg)
Here is another take on making square or in this case oblong bowls, these were made making use of the large bowl jaws by off setting some of the holding buttons on the jaws and a couple of hold fast clips.
Donations for the open day on the 10th August now being gathered, if you are donating a made item see David Hobson, if you are making a cash donation see Alan Geddes.
We hope to see you all there on Wednesday 3rd July 2024 at 6.45pm. There will be tea/coffee available for a 50p donation and the usual raffles will be on sale.
We are still looking for another club member to come onto the committee we have a vacancy for one person, if interested speak to any one of the committee.