Bowl Collars and Rims

Frank Townend

Member
Messages
1,069
Location
Alexandria, Virginia
I remain impressed by the beauty and workmanship of the bowls created by members of this site.

I noticed several of you 'add' a collar or rim of a different species of wood to your work. My question is simple; how do you do it?

My guess is the different species is glued to the top of your blank before you get started, but Vaughn said he added a collar after starting to turn his bowl.

Because I really haven't started turning hollow forms, I thought having a larger mouth that could be made smaller after I started would help me gain experience and confidence.

Thank you in advance.
 
Frank,

There was an episode of this exact scenario on our cable channel 207 (DIY) where they turned both external and internal portions of a HF. They identified they were doing this, as you described, to remove the inside section while the mouth was larger. Once they finished with the interior, they glued a solid top onto the HF and then turned the outside to shape and made a small opening in the top.

Disclaimer: I've never done this myself, just happened to watch the show.

Regards,
 
Frank, I'm still pretty new to making collars, but for the ones I've done, I wait until I'm done turning and sanding the vessel, then I remove it from the lathe and make the collar completely separate. I try to get the edge of the collar (where it meets the hollow form) to finished and sanded shape, since once it's attached to the vessel, it's more difficult to tweak. Also, if you are "ebonizing" the wood, it pretty much needs to be done before attaching it to the piece.

On most of the collars I've done, I've just mounted the collar on a chuck to turn most of it. You can also temporarily "mount" it on the vessel by putting the vessel in the chuck, then using a cone-shaped scrap at the tailstock to hold the collar in place on the vessel with friction. Hard to describe without pictures...but not too difficult to do on the lathe.
 
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