Best source for bowl blanks.

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Rcd567

Rcd567

Member
Joined
Sep 22, 2007
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240
Location
Glenwood, Iowa, USA.
Where do you folks get most of your bowl blanks? It seems to me to be hard to find blanks any deeper than 2 inches. And if I do stumble upon one deeper, they want lots of money. Is there a reasonable source for bowl blanks? Thanks for your time.
 
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Tree trimmers indeed if you are turning green to finish and allowing to warp, or willing to rough turn, let dry, and finish turn. Dry bowl blanks are hard to find, and usually expensive.
 
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I can sell you bowl blanks at a good price. What ends up running the price up is the shipping. Right now I need to get rid of a bunch of Honey Loctus:biggrin:
 
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I bought a bunch of burls a few months ago from Big Dog something or other, Big dog burls, or big dog hardwoods. Anyhow, I was very happy with the results, and happy with the junk cut-offs that I paid for/asked for as well, for making worthless wood projects at a great price.
 
workinforwood said:
I bought a bunch of burls a few months ago from Big Dog something or other, Big dog burls, or big dog hardwoods. Anyhow, I was very happy with the results, and happy with the junk cut-offs that I paid for/asked for as well, for making worthless wood projects at a great price.
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yeah i've checked this out the other day, some of the cut-offs are pretty good quality. you can get small burl bowl blanks from about $15 up larger ones increase in price, naturally
 
i'm expermenting with using flat lumber and glueing it up to make a bowl. first one didn't quite work out, I'll search the web and see if I can find a how to...
I know there is some discussion on cutting the board at an angle and glueing it up.
 
Arborists

I recently talked with some arborists without much luck. Then I connected with one who is a bit of a "green nut" (pun intended). I said that I was really interested in recycling some of the wood instead of having it end up in the chipper. That day, he brought me mimosa, juniper, and crepe myrtle. Then, just this last week, he gave me a 12' stick of red oak that is 33" in diameter (I have a double axle trailer and he was willing to load it for me). I am cutting up 4' of this for bowls and 8'+ into planks which I am going to use to make a cantilever table. I say this to say that I wasn't able to do this until I really "connected" with an arborist that is interested in preserving these great trees; like me!

StatProf

P.S. - Mine is in the Dallas area and I'm not sharing ; )
 
its a shame to see wood of any species go to waste. one of the tree surgeons i had emailed i told him that pieces that were big enough to work with could still survive either as a functional or artistic piece. I was in an old court house yesterday which has been preserved as a park and the groundskeeper said they dump the fellings, having spoken to him he is now keeping anything that he can
 
Check out Fred Holder's More Woodturning web page and down load the November 2008 sample issue -- Captn Jack is featured in an article on turning a bowl from a piece of board in that issue. Jack Wayne is a well known Seattle turner and turning teacher. He is the lead turning instructor at the local Woodcraft Store. Note that the board is held by friction between the plywood backing plate and the tailstock.

Also take a look at Malcom Tibbits page for his article on making a bowl from pen blanks. This is a variant on stacked ring bowls. (note that you can cut rings with a scroll saw instead of a bandsaw).

You can build some good bowl blanks with segmentation -- you invest time instead of money in getting blanks.

My experience is that it takes some personal contact to generate wood from the arborist or others. They get a lot of contacts from those who do not followup or who leave a mess. Money or barter (provide some pens for the crew) helps.

Bill Luce -- another noted turner in the Seattle area -- advertises for wood and make a point of taking it when offered, and leaving a clean site. Again use of time and labor instead of money. Bill uses his skill and sense of grain to get fantastic outcomes from otherwise plain wood -- take a look at some of his work at the AAW website

Word of mouth and membership in a local woodturners/woodworkers group are also helps in getting wood. We have some locally who excel at wood hustling; but they work at it.

Last point -- there is nothing wrong in learning and practice with plain wood. Locally the soup kitchen (known as the Glory Hole) has a soup bowl fund raising where people get a bowl to take home. Plain grain nicely done wood turned bowls are very popular. Our local AAW club is supporting the effort -- some are more experienced than others, but all the bowls are used.
 
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My sister wants me to cut down some cedar trees tomarrow bcause "they hog all the water from the oaks". We could trade or work something out if you are interested. Note that cedar trees have a lot of water in them and take a bit longer to dry out.
 
I'll post this again since some of you are discussing "green wood." We have another member on the IAP that has a solution ... Steven Russel.

Go here: http://www.woodturningvideosplus.com/woodturning-education-articles.html

and look down the left sidebar and read Steve's article on "Boiling Wood." I have been using his method for several years now and have yet to suffer a major loss. Just follow his directions and try it out. I'll bet you will be quite pleased with your results.

BTW, the turkey fryer I use comes from Northern Handyman and is the cats meow when boiling. Their kit comes with everything necessary but not the propane BBQ tank.
 
I've been lucky to pick up some local woods from neighbors, plus what I already have on my property, but even luckier, I have an importer in Knoxville that has a wide variety of woods in about all forms... he has some really nice bowl blanks that are fairly reasonable, some that are really expensive and lots of board lumber that can be used in segmented work ( when I get around to trying segmented work )
 
StatProf is the oak log a nice one?Is it clear if so you should cut the whole thing into quarter sawed lumber,and use log shorts for your bowl stock.Turning stock logs are all over most of it gets cut into firewood,its a shame to waste so much good wood.Good Luck all and take care of that back when logging,Victor
 
I stop anytime I see a tree job taking place, they will normally be happy to give you as much as you want, sometimes they will deliver a truckload of wood to me just so they don't have to pay dumping charges. The other spot that I have gotten some great wood is at a green dump behind the transfer station. All the landscaper and tree guys dump their stuff back there and I have grabbed some great burls and spalted woods from it. They have only asked that I sign a waiver in case I get hurt.
I have also stopped at houses that have a dead tree (if it is something very special) and offered to cut it down in exchange for some or all of the wood. The possibilities are endless, but you do have to pound the pavement to find them.

I forgot, I also will stop and go through someones firewood pile (with permission of course), and if I find anything good I will give them a pen made from it (great for getting orders too).
 
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Gary Max said:
I can sell you bowl blanks at a good price. What ends up running the price up is the shipping. Right now I need to get rid of a bunch of Honey Loctus:biggrin:
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Gary,
Sent you a PM, wood like to some of that. Is it dry enough to work now?

Thanks,
Bob

OH, and Landfilllumber...I'll be in touch...momma's been guarding the purse strings pretty close as of late...LOL. But I get paid every other week. :)
 
I'm very fortunate to have a few sources for my bowls. And they are all free wood. There is a ground crew of a very large ministry group that lets me know when they are felling a tree. I'll try to go out and help and get wood. But lately they just fell the tree and let me know where they put the "good pieces." (I've trained them well.) I'll drop off bowls for the crew as a thank you. One time I had a mixture of bowls and they got in a little tiff of who would get the spalted maple. So, at Christmas I made sure they all had spalted maple bowls.

Another source from this past year was that big wind storm. Tons (literally) of free wood was available. And another good source which was mentioned already, is tree trimmers. All you need is a good chainsaw. (I recommend by-passing the borg saws and go straight to a Stihl.
 
I've had mixed results with ebay. Try tree trimmers, some folks around here, and there are a number of trustworthy specialists like bad dog. Of course, there's always your back yard if you're so lucky as to have one.

Marc
 
You can also go on Craigs List. There are often people who are looking for someone to take down a tree or they have taken it down and the wood is free. If they are taking it down you will need to get there fast as the wood goes quickly.
 
JimB said:
You can also go on Craigs List. There are often people who are looking for someone to take down a tree or they have taken it down and the wood is free. If they are taking it down you will need to get there fast as the wood goes quickly.
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I forgot about Craigslist.

I posted a want ad once and I actually got a hit.
 
Me and all you have to do is email me size info and I can select and photo ones about the size you are looking for. BTW the AU burls I am about 1-2 dollars a pound cheaper than other online sources.
 
rjwolfe3 said:
Other then 2x4's what would be good wood to start with? Green and fresh? Dry and waxed? Softer woods?
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I won't put 2x4 among the "good" wood to start with. :biggrin:

Green or fresh wood is much easier to turn but may warp as it dries. Usually you have to rough turn then dry for months before you can finish a "green" piece. It can also cause rusting on your tools & equipment.

Dry wood is much harder to turn and produce a lot of dust. But you can finish it right away.

Hardwoods are usually prettier choice though tougher to work with.

There are trade-offs...I personally prefer turning green wood.
 
I know it is not the normal way, but learning the tools and techniques on plain cheap woods has some merit -- when you get to the good wood, your probability of making a huge screwup that cannot be recovered go way down. Do not under rate the value of practice on a chunk of construction lumber or cutoffs from beams or the like.
Firewood piles are great starting points for learning, and glued up bowl blanks provide lots of cheap practice -- and many will provide learnings in turning but also in sanding, finishing, polishing, and other tricks and tools of the trade.
 
keithkarl2007 said:
yeah i've checked this out the other day, some of the cut-offs are pretty good quality. you can get small burl bowl blanks from about $15 up larger ones increase in price, naturally
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I can second the quality of the products sold by Bad Dogs Burl Source: http://www.burlsource.com/

My first experience with them was in person last night at the Wood Works Show in Springfield, MA. http://www.woodworksevents.com/

Talk about loads of eye candy! I only purchased some Red Mallee cutoffs, and a few pen blanks that I have never turned: big leak maple, vasticola (never heard of it), and black ash burl.

They have quality, but you will certainly pay for it. If you have time, patience, and space, getting green wood is certainly cheaper. You are limited to domestic woods, but that is not say that you can't find some really nice stuff.
 
Oak Log

LandfillLumber said:
StatProf is the oak log a nice one?Is it clear if so you should cut the whole thing into quarter sawed lumber,and use log shorts for your bowl stock.Turning stock logs are all over most of it gets cut into firewood,its a shame to waste so much good wood.Good Luck all and take care of that back when logging,Victor
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I finally got the oak milled. It was 42" across and about 10' long. I had the middle cut at 8/4 (I have 6 pieces of this quartersawn at 10') and I had the rest cut at 4/4. I'll take pictures and post later. It is drying in my father's barn right now (cement floor, but not climate controlled). I can't stop dreaming about what I am going to do with all of it. I have about ~500 board feet of high quality red oak.

As I hear more about these things in the Dallas area, I will be more than happy to let y'all know. I was just kidding about the not sharing!

Blessings,
StatProf
 
Nolan said:
Me and all you have to do is email me size info and I can select and photo ones about the size you are looking for. BTW the AU burls I am about 1-2 dollars a pound cheaper than other online sources.
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If you are after exotic (especially Australian) burls, Nolan's price is hard (if not impossible) to beat.

It sure would be nice to see his website updated with his inventory pics though. :wink:
 
Stat I will be looking for pics,so did you have the whole thing milled as flat stock(I guess the 8/4 could be for turning or making table legs).Quarter sawed oak is some pretty wood,how wide a board did you get,I'm guessing you got a few nice 12" wide boards.It sounds like it a a beauty of a log,keep looking and talking to people before you know it you will get very picky about the logs you break your back on(LOL).Take pictures of the process and them when you make something nice you will have the history of the wood(a cool thing to some clients).Keep up the Tree-Cycling everyone,Victor L.
 
LandfillLumber said:
Stat I will be looking for pics,so did you have the whole thing milled as flat stock(I guess the 8/4 could be for turning or making table legs).Quarter sawed oak is some pretty wood,how wide a board did you get,I'm guessing you got a few nice 12" wide boards.It sounds like it a a beauty of a log,keep looking and talking to people before you know it you will get very picky about the logs you break your back on(LOL).Take pictures of the process and them when you make something nice you will have the history of the wood(a cool thing to some clients).Keep up the Tree-Cycling everyone,Victor L.
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Victor,

The 8/4 is at 29" wide, so I left it big. It is a lot easier to trim this down later. I have to make a cantilever table out of some of it as a showpiece for the building that is being built where this magnificent tree used to reside. I'll post pics of the table in a couple of years when it is dry!

Blessings,
StatProf (Kyle)
 
I have a lot of Koa bowl blanks and other Hawaiian woods on my website, I only charge the actual cost for shipping and I use flat rate priority mail boxes, let me know if you need some Hawaiian wood, aloha.

Chris
Kalai
 
Bowl Blanks

Hi Chris,
KJP Online is a new company in Ottawa, Canada selling Domestic & Exotic Lumber. Our site currently has a growing variety of bowl blanks but email/PM a message with your preferred woods as we stock over 80 species in the warehouse and can almost always dimension required sizes. We take a pic of every wood blank so they'll be no surprises receiving your parcel.

Happy Turning!
Karen

Rcd567 said:
Where do you folks get most of your bowl blanks? It seems to me to be hard to find blanks any deeper than 2 inches. And if I do stumble upon one deeper, they want lots of money. Is there a reasonable source for bowl blanks? Thanks for your time.
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